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arXiv:2505.01682

Vortex States and Coherence Lengths in Flat-Band Superconductors

Chuang Li, Fu‐Chun Zhang, Lun‐Hui Hu

Published May 3, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Superconductivity in flat-band systems, governed by quantum metric of Bloch states rather than the BCS framework, exhibits unique phenomena due to the vanishing electron group velocity. Here, we propose the vortex states and vortex size as direct probes to explore the quantum geometry effects in flat-band superconductors. We show that flat-band vortex bound states are sharply localized near the vortex core, and the energy gap between the lowest two bound states is on the order of the bulk superconducting gap. Both the spatial spread and energy scales of bound states are controlled by the flat-band's quantum metric length. Moreover, the vortex size at zero temperature, set by the quantum metric length, is atomic in scale and independent of interaction strength. Near $T_c$, the vortex size corresponds to the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length, diverges as $ξ\sim \sqrt{T_c/(T_c-T)}ξ_0$, where $ξ_0$ depends linearly on the quantum metric length. Thus, the quantum metric serves as the lower bound for vortex state spread and vortex size. We also introduce perturbations to make the flat band dispersive, and distinguish flat-band vortices from BCS-like vortices. Our results establish vortices as universal probes of quantum geometry in flat-band superconductors.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2505.01682

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Superconductivity in flat-band systems, governed by quantum metric of Bloch states rather than the BCS framework, exhibits unique phenomena due to the vanishing electron group velocity. Here, we propose the vortex states and vortex size as direct probes to explore the quantum geometry effects in flat-band superconductors. We show that flat-band vortex bound states are sharply localized near the vortex core, and the energy gap between the lowest two bound states is on the order of the bulk superconducting gap. Both the spatial spread and energy scales of bound states are controlled by the flat-band's quantum metric length. Moreover, the vortex size at zero temperature, set by the quantum metric length, is atomic in scale and independent of interaction strength. Near TcT_cTc​, the vortex size corresponds to the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length, diverges as ξ∼Tc/(Tc−T)ξ0ξ\sim \sqrt{T_c/(T_c-T)}ξ_0ξ∼Tc​/(Tc​−T)​ξ0​, where ξ0ξ_0ξ0​ depends linearly on the quantum metric length. Thus, the quantum metric serves as the lower bound for vortex state spread and vortex size. We also introduce perturbations to make the flat band dispersive, and distinguish flat-band vortices from BCS-like vortices. Our results establish vortices as universal probes of quantum geometry in flat-band superconductors.
To explore the influence of quantum-geometric effects on the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length in a dilute flat-band superconductor, we adopt a BCS-BEC crossover approach to the multiband pyrochlore-Hubbard model near the critical temperature for superconductivity. Our self-consistent formulation for this three-dimensional lattice benchmarks very well against the so-called zero-temperature coherence length, demonstrating the monotonic decay of the coherence length to zero as the interaction strength increases. Additionally, we show that the effective mass of the many-body bound states (i.e., Cooper pairs) is nearly identical to that of the lowest-lying two-body bound states in the dilute flat-band limit.
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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.
The quantum geometry of Bloch states fundamentally affects a wide range of physical phenomena. The quantum Hall effect, for example, is governed by the Chern number, and flat-band superconductivity by the distance between the Bloch states: the quantum metric. While understanding quantum geometry phenomena in the context of fermions is well established, less is known about the role of quantum geometry in bosonic systems where particles can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). In conventional single-band or continuum systems, excitations of a weakly interacting BEC are determined by the condensate density and the interparticle interaction energy. In contrast to this, we discover here fundamental connections between the properties of a weakly interacting BEC and the underlying quantum geometry of a multiband lattice system. We show that, in the flat-band limit, the defining physical quantities of BEC, namely, the speed of sound and the quantum depletion, are dictated solely by the quantum geometry. We find that the speed of sound becomes proportional to the quantum metric of the condensed state. Furthermore, the quantum distance between the Bloch functions forces the quantum depletion and the quantum fluctuations of the density-density correlation to obtain finite values for infinitesimally small interactions. This is in striking contrast to dispersive bands where these quantities vanish with the interaction strength. Additionally, we show how in the flat-band limit the supercurrent is carried by the quantum fluctuations and is determined by the Berry connections of the Bloch states. Our results reveal how nontrivial quantum geometry allows reaching strong quantum correlation regime of condensed bosons even with weak interactions. This is highly relevant, for example, for polariton and photon BECs where interparticle interactions are inherently small. Our predictions can be experimentally tested with flat-band lattices already implemented in ultracold gases and various photonic platforms.