Strong Enhancement of Superconducting Correlation in a Two-Component Fermion Gas

TL;DR

This paper predicts a novel superconducting phase in high-density electron-hole systems where excess electrons form Cooper pairs, significantly enhancing the superconducting order parameter compared to traditional BCS theory.

Contribution

It introduces a new superconducting phase involving electron-hole pairing with coexistence of e-h and e-e orders, which is unique due to opposite charges of electrons and holes.

Findings

Superconducting phase with electron-hole Cooper pairing identified.

e-h order enhances the superconducting order parameter by over ten times.

Phase potentially observable in photoexcited doped semiconductors at low temperatures.

Abstract

We study high-density electron-hole (e-h) systems with the electron density slightly larger than the hole density. We find a new superconducting phase, in which the excess electrons form Cooper pairs moving in an e-h BCS phase. The coexistence of the e-h and e-e orders is possible because e and h have opposite charges, whereas analogous phases are impossible in the case of two fermion species that have the same charge or are neutral. Most strikingly, the e-h order enhances the superconducting e-h order parameter by more than one order of magnitude as compared with that given by the BCS formula, for the same value of the effective e-e attractive potential \lambda^{ee}. This new phase should be observable in an e-h system created by photoexcitation in doped semiconductors at low temperatures.