Signature of Chiral Superconductivity Evidenced in Mesoscopic Superconductors

Superconductivity, the result of cooper pairs condensation, is a profound manifestation of the macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Recently, the topological superconductor with chiral order parameter in the gap function which spontaneously breaks the time reversal symmetry, has exhibited distinctive non-trivial topological properties from the conventional superconductors. The novel chiral superconductor will host Majorana Fermions which obey the non-abelian statistics and thus has fundamental implications in the topological quantum computing. The identification of chiral superconductor is still challenging. Here we demonstrate that the chiral signature of a superconductor can be manifested in the Little-Parks effect of a mesoscopic superconducting structure, as the appearance of an additional linear term in the temperature and magnetic field phase boundary. Together with the previous phase-sensitive experiments [1,2], our results indicate that the superconducting state of β-Bi₂Pd is chiral p-wave. This finding opens door for the investigations of novel quantum phenomena by the sample topology.

1. Li et al., Science 366, 238-241 (2019).

2. Xu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 056001 (2024).