Intrinsic superconducting diode effect and nonreciprocal superconductivity in rhombohedral graphene multilayers

Abstract

Recent experiments have revealed that superconductivity in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene can emerge from a valley-polarized and, hence, chiral normal state. The interplay of pairing and the reduced normal-state symmetries sparked widespread interest. In this work, we demonstrate within a microscopic theoretical formalism that this stabilizes a non-reciprocal superconducting state. Our results are based on a fully self-consistent framework for determining the superconducting order parameter from a Kohn-Luttinger mechanism. We show that the system displays a sizeable intrinsic superconducting diode effect, i.e., without the need for applying external magnetic fields, which is also highly tunable by an external displacement field. Moreover, we find that the angular dependence of the critical current is highly sensitive to the Fermi surfaces of the normal state. Hence, our results suggest that the critical current could provide insights into the type of Fermi surface topology from which superconductivity arises.