Hosohedral nodal-line superconductivity in hexagonal ABC Dirac semimetals

Abstract

The recently identified hexagonal non-polar phase of KZnBi, an archetypal topological semimetal, has been found to cohost superconductivity on the surface. We propose that KZnBi can realize an unconventional topological superconductor featuring the hosohedral formation of nodal lines and Bogoliubov Fermi surface emerging under a magnetic field. Our density functional theory (DFT)-based low-energy model shows that the nonsymmorphic band degeneracy of the Dirac bands generically triggers topological nodal line superconductivity fostered by inter-band Coulomb interaction. In particular, the nodal lines of the gap resemble a hexagonal hosohedron with the Schläfli symbol of {2, 6}. Remarkably, the holohedral nodal line superconductor defines the topological phase boundary of the Bogoliubov Fermi surface in the limit where time-reversal symmetry is restored. Our results demonstrate that line nodes readily inflate to the Bogoliubov Fermi surface under an external magnetic field. We provide an experimentally verifiable explanation for the observed superconductivity and suggest a feasible platform for observing topological superconductivity in the hexagonal ABC ternary systems class. © 2024, The Author(s).