Pathways from a chiral superconductor to a composite Fermi liquid

Journal Article · Wed Mar 25 00:00:00 EDT 2026 · Physical Review B

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/txjx-s4zx· OSTI ID:3029260

Senthil, T. ^[1]; Zhang, Yunchao ^[2]; Shackleton, Leyna ^[2]

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1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)

Recent experiments have reported chiral time-reversal broken superconductivity in n-layer rhombohedral graphene for n=4,5,6. Introducing a moiré potential by alignement with a hexagonal boron nitride substrate suppresses the superconductivity but leads instead to various fractional quantum anomalous Hall phenomena. Motivated by these observations, we consider the fate of the phase transition between (a chiral) Landau Fermi liquid (LFL) metal and a Composite Fermi Liquid (CFL) metal in the presence of attractive interactions. These are parent states, respectively, for the superconductor and the fractional quantum Hall states. For weak attractive interactions, the LFL is usually unstable to superconductivity while the CFL is stable. This raises the possibility of a direct continuous phase transition between the chiral superconductor and the CFL. However, we show that generically the LFL close to the transition to the CFL is stable against superconductivity. Furthermore the evolution between the CFL and chiral superconductor goes through an intermediate stable LFL phase for weak attractive interactions. With stronger interactions, the evolution can instead go through a non-Abelian paired quantum Hall state.

• Research Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division (MSE)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0008739
• Other Award/Contract Number: 2141064
• OSTI ID: 3029260
• Journal Information: Physical Review B, Journal Name: Physical Review B; ISSN 2469-9969; ISSN 2469-9950
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
Superconductivity
non-fermi liquids
quantum Hall effect