Nematic superconductivity stabilized by density wave fluctuations: Application to twisted bilayer graphene

ORAL

Abstract

Nematic superconductors possess unconventional superconducting order parameters that spontaneously break rotational symmetry of the underlying crystal. In this work we propose a mechanism for nematic superconductivity stabilized by strong density wave fluctuations in two dimensions. While the weak-coupling theory finds the fully gapped chiral state to be energetically stable, we show that strong density wave fluctuations result in an additional contribution to the free energy of a superconductor with multicomponent order parameters, which generally favors nematic superconductivity. Our theory shades light on the recent observation of rotational symmetry breaking in the superconducting state of twisted bilayer graphene.

*This work is supported by DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award DE-SC0018945. LF is partly supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. JWFV was supported by the National Science Foundation MRSEC Program, under grant DMR-1720530.

Presenters

  • Vladyslav Kozii

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • Vladyslav Kozii

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Hiroki Isobe

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Jorn Venderbos

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania
  • Liang Fu

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • MIT
    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology