Superfluid stiffness bounds in time-reversal symmetric superconductors

TL;DR

This paper derives bounds on superfluid stiffness in time-reversal symmetric superconductors, highlighting the role of quantum geometry and broken Galilean invariance, with implications for flat-band and multilayer graphene systems.

Contribution

It introduces general bounds on superfluid stiffness considering quantum geometric effects and broken Galilean invariance, extending previous understanding to both continuum and lattice models.

Findings

Superfluid stiffness in Landau levels saturates the lower bound.

In multilayer rhombohedral graphene, geometric effects are not dominant.

Superfluid stiffness is proportional to the minimal quantum metric.

Abstract

Quantum geometry has been shown to make an important contribution to the superfluid stiffness of superconductors, especially for flat-band systems such as moir\'e materials. In this work we use mean-field theory to derive an expression for the superfluid stiffness of time-reversal symmetric superconductors at zero temperature by computing the energy of the mean-field ground state as a function of pairing momentum. We show that the quantum geometric contribution to superfluid stiffness is a consequence of broken Galilean invariance in the interaction Hamiltonian, arising from momentum-dependent form factors related to the momentum dependence of Bloch states. The effects of broken Galilean invariance are not fully parametrized by the quantum metric considered in previous work. We obtain general lower and upper bounds that apply to both continuum and lattice models and present numerical calculations of the precise value in several important cases. The superfluid stiffness of superconductivity in a Landau level saturates the lower bound and the superfluid stiffness of the other cases we consider is close to the general lower bound we derive. In multilayer rhombohedral graphene the geometric contribution is shown not to be the dominant contribution to the superfluid stiffness, despite the flat band behavior in the vicinity of the Fermi level. Finally, assuming contact interaction and uniform pairing, we show that the superfluid stiffness is proportional to the ``minimal quantum metric" introduced in previous work. We provide a continuum version of the minimal quantum metric and explain its physical origin.