2024/10/07 by Mattia Trama, Trama, Mattia, Viktor Könye +5 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Materials Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Graphene research and applications #nanoparticles nucleation surface interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.05381
Weyl semimetals host topologically protected surface states, the so-called Fermi arcs, that have a penetration depth into the bulk that depends on surface-momentum, and diverges at the Weyl points. It has recently been observed in PtBi2 that such Fermi arc states can become superconducting, with a critical temperature larger than that of the bulk. Here we introduce a general variational method that captures the interplay between surface and bulk superconductivity, for any bulk Hamiltonian that harbors (topological) surface states with varying penetration depth. From the self-consistent solutions we establish that the surface state localization length of Weyl semimetals leads to characteristic features in the surface superconductivity, with a gap depending on surface momentum and a penetration length for the order parameter that is temperature-dependent due to competition with the bulk superconductivity.