Double Helix Nodal Line Superconductor

Time-reversal invariant superconductors in three dimensions may contain nodal lines in the Brillouin zone, which behave as Wilson loops of 3D momentum-space Chern-Simons theory of the Berry connection. Here we study the conditions of realizing linked nodal lines (Wilson loops), which yield a topolog...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2017-10, Vol.119 (14), p.147001-147001, Article 147001
Main Authors: Sun, Xiao-Qi, Lian, Biao, Zhang, Shou-Cheng
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Time-reversal invariant superconductors in three dimensions may contain nodal lines in the Brillouin zone, which behave as Wilson loops of 3D momentum-space Chern-Simons theory of the Berry connection. Here we study the conditions of realizing linked nodal lines (Wilson loops), which yield a topological contribution to the thermal magnetoelectric coefficient that is given by the Chern-Simons action. We find the essential conditions are the existence of torus or higher genus Fermi surfaces and spiral spin textures. We construct such a model with two torus Fermi surfaces, where a generic spin-dependent interaction leads to double-helix-like linked nodal lines as the superconductivity is developed.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.147001