Theory of Hofstadter superconductors

Abstract

We study mean-field states resulting from the pairing of electrons in time-reversal broken fractal Hofstadter bands, which arise in two-dimensional lattices where the unit cell traps magnetic flux Φ=(p/q)Φ0 comparable to the flux quantum Φ0=h/e. It is established that the dimension and degeneracy of the irreducible representations of the magnetic translation group (MTG) furnished by the charge 2e pairing fields have different properties from those furnished by single-particle Bloch states, and in particular are shown to depend on the parity of the denominator q. We explore this symmetry analysis to formulate a Ginzburg-Landau theory describing the thermodynamic properties of Hofstadter superconductors at arbitrary rational flux Φ=(p/q)Φ0 in terms of a multicomponent order parameter that describes the finite momentum pairing of electrons across different Fermi surface patches. This phenomenological theory leads to a rich phase diagram characterized by different symmetry breaking patterns of the MTG, which can be interpreted as distinct classes of vortex lattices. A class of Zq-symmetric Hofstadter SCs is identified, in which the MTG breaks down to a Zq subgroup. We study the topological properties of such Zq-symmetric Hofstadter SCs and show that the parity of the Chern numbers is fixed by the parity of q. We identify the conditions for the realization of Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces in the presence of parity and MTG symmetries, establishing a novel topological invariant capturing the existence of such charge-neutral gapless excitations. Our findings, which could bear relevance to the description of re-entrant superconductivity in moiré systems in the Hofstadter regime, establish Hofstadter SC as a fertile setting to explore symmetry broken and topological orders.

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