Intravalley spin-polarized superconductivity in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene

Abstract

We study the intravalley spin-polarized superconductivity in rhombohedral tetralayer graphene, which has been discovered experimentally in Han $et$ $al$ arXiv:2408.15233. We construct a minimal model for the intravalley spin-polarized superconductivity, assuming a simplified anisotropic interaction that depends only on the angle between the incoming and outgoing momenta. Despite the absence of Fermi surface nesting, we show that the superconductivity appears near the Van Hove singularity with the maximal $T_c$ near a bifurcation point of the peaks in the density of states. We identify the topological $p+ip$, topological $h+ih$, and the non-topological nodal $f$-wave pairings as the possible states, which are all pair density wave orders due to the intravalley nature. Furthermore, these pair density wave orders require a finite attractive threshold for superconductivity, resulting in narrow superconducting regions, consistent with experimental findings. We discuss the possible pairing mechanisms and point out that the Kohn-Luttinger mechanism is a plausible explanation for the intravalley spin-polarized superconductivity in the rhombohedral tetralayer graphene.