Proximity induced superconductivity in Weyl semi-metals

Udit Khanna, Arijit Kundu, Saurabh Pradhan, Sumathi Rao

Published 2014-07-28, updated 2014-11-05Version 2

We introduce superconducting proximity effects in Weyl semi-metals (WSM) with broken time reversal symmetry by tunnel coupling one of its surfaces to an s-wave superconductor using the Green's function approach. We find that the band structure develops coherence peaks, but despite the presence of metallic states in the bulk, the coherence peaks do not extend far into the bulk and remain confined to a few layers close to the interface, similar to the proximity effect in the topological insulators (TI) which are gapped in the bulk. The Weyl nodes remain unaffected, and in that sense, no true gap develops. We also study the various induced p and s-wave pairing amplitudes classified by their symmetries, as a function of the various relevant parameters of the theory and note the exponential decay of the induced pairings in the bulk both in the TI and the WSM, even at finite chemical potential.