Many-body superconductivity in topological flat bands

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Authors: Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman, Aaron Chew, Kukka-Emilia Huhtinen, Päivi Törmä, B. Andrei Bernevig
Cited by: 15

Abstract

In a flat band superconductor, bosonic excitations disperse while unpaired electrons are immobile. To study this strongly interacting system, we construct a family of multi-band Hubbard models with exact eta-pairing ground states in all space groups. We analytically compute their many-body excitations and find that the Cooper pair bound states obey an effective single-boson hopping Hamiltonian written in terms of the non-interacting wavefunctions. These bound states possess a unique zero-energy excitation whose quadratic dispersion is determined by the minimal quantum metric. The rest of the bound state spectrum is classified by topological quantum chemistry, which we use to identify Cooper pairs with Weyl nodes, higher angular momentum pairing, and fragile topology. Broadening the band dispersion, we find the strongest pairing occurs at half filling and not at the highest density of states. Our analytical results prove that the elementary fermionic and bosonic excitations, corresponding respectively to pairing and coherence, are governed by distinct properties of the flat band, rigorously establishing its unique phenomenology. Superconductivity in flat bands is a central feature of quantum geometric effects, supported by mean-field theory and numerics. Here, the authors exhibit a large family of flat band Hubbard models whose ground states, Bogoliubov-de-Gennes particles, and Cooper pairs are exactly solvable with analytically calculable dispersions.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Topological Materials and Phenomena Graphene research and applications Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism

Publication details

Journal / source
Communications Physics
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication date
4 July 2026
Language
EN