We study superconductivity in spin-orbit-coupled systems in the vicinity of inversion symmetry breaking. We find that, because of the presence of spin-orbit coupling, fluctuations of the incipient parity-breaking order generate an attractive pairing interaction in an odd-parity pairing channel, which competes with the s-wave pairing. We show that Coulomb repulsion or an external Zeeman field suppresses the s-wave pairing and promotes the odd-parity superconducting state. Our work provides a new mechanism for odd-parity pairing and opens a route to novel topological superconductivity.

We study the inelastic scattering rate due to the Coulomb interaction in three-dimensional Dirac/Weyl semimetals at finite temperature. We show that the perturbation theory diverges because of the long-range nature of the interaction, hence, thermally induced screening must be taken into account. We demonstrate that the scattering rate has a nonmonotonic energy dependence with a sharp peak owing to the resonant decay into thermal plasmons. We also consider the Hubbard interaction for comparison. We show that, in contrast to the Coulomb case, it can be well described by the second-order perturbation theory in a wide energy range.

We introduce a topological theory to study quasiparticles in interacting and/or disordered many-body systems, which have a finite lifetime due to inelastic and/or elastic scattering. The one-body quasiparticle Hamiltonian includes both the Bloch Hamiltonian of band theory and the self-energy due to interactions, which is non-Hermitian when quasiparticle lifetime is finite. We study the topology of non-Hermitian quasiparticle Hamiltonians in momentum space, whose energy spectrum is complex. The interplay of band structure and quasiparticle lifetime is found to have remarkable consequences in zero- and small-gap systems. In particular, we predict the existence of topological exceptional point and bulk Fermi arc in Dirac materials with two distinct quasiparticle lifetimes.

Recent nuclear magnetic resonance and specific heat measurements have provided concurring evidence of spontaneously broken rotational symmetry in the superconducting state of the doped topological insulator CuxBi2Se3. This suggests that the pairing symmetry corresponds to a two-dimensional representation of the D3d crystal point group, and that CuxBi2Se3 is a nematic superconductor. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of the upper critical field Hc2 of nematic superconductors within Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory. Contrary to typical GL theories which have an emergent U(1) rotational symmetry obscuring the discrete symmetry of the crystal, the theory of two-component superconductors in trigonal D3d crystals reflects the true crystal rotation symmetry. This has direct implications for the upper critical field. First, Hc2 of trigonal superconductors with D3d symmetry exhibits a sixfold anisotropy in the basal plane. Second, when the degeneracy of the two components is lifted by, e.g., uniaxial strain, Hc2 exhibits a twofold anisotropy with characteristic angle and temperature dependence. Our thorough study shows that measurement of the upper critical field is a direct method of detecting nematic superconductivity, which is directly applicable to recently-discovered trigonal superconductors CuxBi2Se3, SrxBi2Se3, NbxBi2Se3, and TlxBi2Te3.

We study how an inversion-breaking quantum critical point affects the ground state of a one-dimensional electronic liquid with repulsive interaction and spin-orbit coupling. We find that regardless of the interaction strength, the critical fluctuations always lead to a gap in the electronic spin sector. The origin of the gap is a two-particle backscattering process, which becomes relevant due to renormalization of the Luttinger parameter near the critical point. The resulting spin-gapped state is topological and can be considered as a one-dimensional version of a spin-triplet superconductor. Interestingly, in the case of a ferromagnetic critical point, the Luttinger parameter is renormalized in the opposite manner, such that the system remains nonsuperconducting.

Motivated by the recent experiment indicating that superconductivity in the doped topological insulator CuxBi2Se3 has an odd-parity pairing symmetry with rotational symmetry breaking, we study the general class of odd-parity superconductors with two-component order parameters in trigonal and hexagonal crystal systems. In the presence of strong spin-orbit interaction, we find two possible superconducting phases below Tc, a time-reversal-breaking (i.e., chiral) phase and an anisotropic (i.e., nematic) phase, and determine their relative energetics from the gap function in momentum space. The nematic superconductor generally has a full quasiparticle gap, whereas the chiral superconductor with a three-dimensional (3D) Fermi surface has point nodes with lifted spin degeneracy, resulting in itinerant Majorana fermions in the bulk and topological Majorana arcs on the surface.

Using a systematic symmetry and topology analysis, we establish that three-dimensional chiral superconductors with strong spin-orbit coupling and odd-parity pairing generically host low-energy nodal quasiparticles that are spin-nondegenerate and realize Majorana fermions in three dimensions. By examining all types of chiral Cooper pairs with total angular momentum J formed by Bloch electrons with angular momentum j in crystals, we obtain a comprehensive classification of gapless Majorana quasiparticles in terms of energy-momentum relation and location on the Fermi surface. We show that the existence of bulk Majorana fermions in the vicinity of spin-selective point nodes is rooted in the nonunitary nature of chiral pairing in spin-orbit-coupled superconductors. We address experimental signatures of Majorana fermions and find that the nuclear magnetic resonance spin relaxation rate is significantly suppressed for nuclear spins polarized along the nodal direction as a consequence of the spin-selective Majorana nature of nodal quasiparticles. Furthermore, Majorana nodes in the bulk have nontrivial topology and imply the presence of Majorana bound states on the surface, which form arcs in momentum space. We conclude by proposing the heavy fermion superconductor PrOs₄Sb₁₂ and related materials as promising candidates for nonunitary chiral superconductors hosting three-dimensional Majorana fermions.

We calculate the thermoelectric response coefficients of three-dimensional Dirac or Weyl semimetals as a function of magnetic field, temperature, and Fermi energy. We focus in particular on the thermoelectric Hall coefficient αxy and the Seebeck coefficient Sxx, which are well-defined even in the dissipationless limit. We contrast the behaviors of αxy and Sxx with those of traditional Schrödinger particle systems, such as doped semiconductors. Strikingly, we find that for Dirac materials αxy acquires a constant, quantized value at sufficiently large magnetic field, which is independent of the magnetic field or the Fermi energy, and this leads to unprecedented growth in the thermopower and the thermoelectric figure of merit. We further show that even relatively small fields, such that ωcτ∼1 (where ωc is the cyclotron frequency and τ is the scattering time), are sufficient to produce a more than 100% increase in the figure of merit.

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 sheds light on the recent observation of rotational symmetry breaking in the superconducting state of twisted bilayer graphene.