Superconductivity in Weyl semimetals in a strong pseudomagnetic field

Abstract

The superconducting s-wave state in Weyl semimetals in a strong strain-induced pseudomagnetic field is investigated in a model with local four-fermion interaction. It is found that only the inter-node pairing is possible in the lowest pseudo-Landau level approximation. Unlike the case of the lowest Landau level in a conventional magnetic field, the corresponding gap equation has only a trivial solution. Nevertheless, superconductivity can be induced via the proximity effect with a usual s-wave spin-singlet superconductor. Since a pseudomagnetic field is present necessarily at the surface of a Weyl semimetal, the proximity effect is strongly affected by the pseudomagnetic field. The analysis of such an effect showed that while no gap is opened in the spectrum, the degeneracy of energy levels is lifted. The unique character of the proximity effect in Weyl semimetals can be probed via the density of states, the spectral function, and the tunneling current. The density of states does not vanish at small energies and scales linearly with the pseudomagnetic field strength. This scaling is manifested also in the tunneling current.Comment: 17 pages, 7 multi-panel figures; published versio