Optically induced topological superconductivity via Floquet interaction engineering

We study the photo-induced superconductivity in a two-valley semiconductor with a massive Dirac type band structure. The superconducting phase results from the out-of-equilibrium excitation of carriers in the presence of Coulomb repulsion and is stabilized by coupling the driven semiconductor to a bosonic or fermionic thermal bath. We consider a circularly-polarized light pump and show that by controlling the detuning of the pump frequency relative to the band gap, different types of chiral superconductivity would be induced. The emergence of novel superconducting states, such as the chiral p-wave pairing, results from the Floquet engineering of the interaction. This is realized by modifying the form of the Coulomb interaction by projecting it into the states that are resonant with the pump frequency. We discuss a promising experimental platform to realize our proposal.