Chern number landscape of spin-orbit coupled chiral superconductors

TL;DR

This paper explores the topological properties of spin-orbit coupled chiral superconductors, revealing a rich landscape of Chern numbers and phase tunability in the Rashba-Hubbard model on a triangular lattice.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed topological classification of chiral superconducting states in the Rashba-Hubbard model using TU-FRG, highlighting the fragmentation into various Chern number sectors.

Findings

Dominance of the E2 irrep in superconducting phase

Fragmentation of topological sectors with different Chern numbers

Potential for high sensitivity and tunability of topological edge modes

Abstract

Chiral superconductors are one of the predominant quantum electronic states of matter where topology, symmetry, and Fermiology intertwine. This is pushed to a new limit by further invoking the coupling between spin and charge degrees of freedom, which fundamentally affects the principal nature of the Cooper pair wave function. We investigate the onset of superconductivity in the Rashba-Hubbard model on the triangular lattice, which is symmetry-classified by the associated irreducible representations (irrep) of the hexagonal point group. From an instability analysis by means of the truncated-unity functional renormalization group (TU-FRG) we find the $E_2$ irrep to dominate a large fraction of phase space and to lead up to an energetically preferred gapped, chiral superconducting state. The topological phase space classification associated with the anomalous propagators obtained from TU-FRG reveals a fragmentation of the $E_2$ domain into different topological sectors with vastly differing Chern numbers. It hints at a potentially applicable high sensitivity and tunability of chiral superconductors with respect to topological edge modes and phase transitions.