Topological phases and flat surface bands in superconductors without inversion symmetry

Andreas Schnyder

MPI für Festkörperforschung, Stuttgart, Germany

We examine different topological phases in three-dimensional non-centrosymmetric superconductors with time-reversal symmetry by using three different types of topological invariants. Due to the bulk boundary correspondence, a non-zero value of any of these topological numbers indicates the appearance of zero-energy Andreev surface states. In fully gapped phases the presence of these surface states is independent of the surface orientation, whereas in nodal superconducting phases the Andreev states appear only for certain orientations of the surface. We find that some of these boundary modes in nodal superconducting phases are dispersionless, i.e., they form a flat surface band. These dispersionless Andreev surface bound states have many observable consequences. In particular, they lead to a zero-bias conductance peak in the scanning tunneling spectra. Furthermore, we discuss the appearance of surface Majorana modes in gapless superconducting phases.

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