Eliashberg Theory and Superfluid Stiffness of Band-Off-Diagonal Pairing in Twisted Graphene

TL;DR

This paper investigates band-off-diagonal superconductivity in twisted graphene using Eliashberg theory, revealing how interband pairing influences spectral properties and superfluid stiffness, with implications for experimental observations.

Contribution

It extends mean-field analysis to Eliashberg theory, demonstrating the effects of frequency dependence and interband structure on pairing symmetry and superfluid stiffness in twisted graphene.

Findings

Interband pairing exhibits enhanced spectral weight below the order-parameter energy.

Superfluid stiffness is reduced by interband structure, affecting temperature saturation.

Chiral states can have suppressed stiffness saturation temperature, indicating complex competition.

Abstract

Recently, band-off-diagonal superconductivity has been proposed [Nat. Commun. 14, 7134 (2023)] as a candidate pairing state for twisted graphene systems. Based on mean-field theory, it was shown that it not only naturally emerges from both intervalley electron-phonon coupling and fluctuations of the nearby correlated insulator, but also exhibits nodal and gapped regimes as indicated by scanning tunneling microscopy experiments. Here we study band-off-diagonal pairing within Eliashberg theory. We show that despite the additional frequency dependence, the leading-order description of both intervalley coherent fluctuations or intervalley phonons exhibits a symmetry prohibiting admixture of an intraband component to the interband pairing state. It is found that even- and odd-frequency pairing mix, which originates from the reduced number of flavor degrees of freedom in the normal state. From analytic continuation, we obtain the electronic spectral function showing that, also within Eliashberg theory, the interband nature leads to an enhanced spectral weight below the order-parameter energy compared to band-diagonal pairing. Finally, we also study the superfluid stiffness of band-off-diagonal pairing, taking into account multi-band and quantum geometry effects. It is shown that for $s$-wave and chiral momentum dependencies, conventionally leading to fully gapped phases, an interband structure reduces the temperature scale below which the stiffness saturates. Depending on parameters, for the chiral state, this scale can even be suppressed all the way to zero temperature leading to a complex competition of multiple dispersive and geometrical contributions. Our results show that interband pairing might also be able to explain more recent stiffness measurements in the superconducting state of twisted multilayer graphene.