Chiral Meissner effect in time-reversal invariant Weyl superconductors

TL;DR

This paper explores how the chiral anomaly influences magnetic properties in time-reversal invariant Weyl superconductors, revealing a novel chiral Meissner effect with distinct experimental signatures due to axion coupling.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of the axion term on magnetic field behavior in Weyl superconductors, including a transition from type II to type I superconductivity and the emergence of a chiral Meissner state.

Findings

Magnetic fields become transverse to vortices in type II Weyl SCs due to axion coupling.

A critical coupling causes a transition to type I superconductivity with magnetic field rotation.

Chiral susceptibility diverges periodically, indicating distinct chiral Meissner regimes.

Abstract

Weyl semimetals have nodes in their electronic structure at which electrons attain a definite chirality. Due to the chiral anomaly, the non-conservation of charges with given chirality, the axion term appears in their effective electromagnetic action. We determine how this affects the properties of time-reversal invariant Weyl {\it superconductors} (SCs) in the London regime. For type II SCs the axion coupling generates magnetic $B$-fields transverse to vortices, which become unstable at a critical coupling so that a transition into type I SC ensues. In this regime an applied $B$-field not only decays inside the SC within the London penetration depth, but the axion coupling generates an additional perpendicular field. Consequently, when penetrating into the bulk the $B$-field starts to steadily rotate away from the applied field. At a critical coupling the screening of the magnetic field breaks down. The novel chiral superconducting state that emerges has a periodically divergent susceptibility that separates onsets of chiral Meissner regimes. The chiral anomaly thus leaves very crisp experimental signatures in structurally chiral Weyl SCs with an axion response.