Kohn-Luttinger Mechanism Driven Exotic Topological Superconductivity on the Penrose Lattice.

Abstract

The Kohn-Luttinger mechanism for unconventional superconductivity (SC) driven by weak repulsive electron-electron interactions on a periodic lattice is generalized to the quasicrystal (QC) via a real-space perturbative approach. The repulsive Hubbard model on the Penrose lattice is studied as an example, on which a classification of the pairing symmetries is performed and a pairing phase diagram is obtained. Tworemarkable properties of these pairing states are revealed, due to the combination of the presence of the point-group symmetry and the lack of translation symmetry on this lattice. First, the spin and spacial angular momenta of a Cooper pair is decorrelated: for each pairing symmetry, both spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairings are possible even in the weak-pairing limit. Second, the pairing states belonging to the 2D irreducible representations of the D_{5} point group can be time-reversal-symmetry-breaking topological SCs carrying spontaneous bulk super current and spontaneous vortices. These two remarkable properties are general for the SCs on all QCs, and are rare on periodic lattices. Our work starts the new area of unconventional SCs driven by repulsive interactions on the QC.