Twists and turns of superconductivity from a repulsive dynamical interaction

TL;DR

This paper reviews how superconductivity can emerge from repulsive interactions with frequency dependence, revealing topological features of the gap function and critical behavior near quantum phase transitions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that repulsive, frequency-dependent interactions can lead to superconductivity with a sign-changing gap, introducing topological and critical phenomena analysis.

Findings

Superconductivity can occur despite repulsion if the gap function changes sign.

Zeros of the gap function on the Matsubara axis have a topological interpretation as vortices.

A critical line terminates at a quantum-critical point with complex gap behavior.

Abstract

We review recent theoretical progress in understanding spatially uniform $s$-wave superconductivity which arises from a fermion-fermion interaction, which is repulsive on the Matsubara axis, where it is real, but does depend on the transferred frequency. Such a situation holds, e.g., for systems with a screened Coulomb and retarded electron-phonon interaction. We show that despite repulsion, superconductivity is possible in a certain range of system parameters. However, at $T=0$ the gap function on the Matsubara axis, $\Delta (\omega_m)$, must pass through zero and change sign at least once. These zeros of $\Delta (\omega_m)$ have a topological interpretation in terms of dynamical vortices, and their presence imposes a constraint on the variation of the phase of the gap function along the real frequency axis, which can potentially be extracted from ARPES and other measurements. We discuss how superconductivity vanishes when the repulsion becomes too strong, and obtain a critical line which terminates at $T=0$ at a quantum-critical point for superconductivity. We show that the behavior of the gap function near this point is highly non-trivial. In particular, an infinitesimally small $\Delta (\omega_m)$ contains a singular $\delta-$function piece $\omega_m \delta (\omega_m)$. We argue that near the critical point superconductivity may be a mixed state with even-frequency and odd-frequency gap components.