Chiral Phonon Mediated High-Temperature Superconductivity

Abstract: Breaking down the traditional perception on phonons which are achiral, the recent discovery of chiral phonon carrying angular momentum provides possible ways to couple electron, photon, spin, magnon and exciton, etc. We theoretically proposed an electron-chiral phonon interaction with two-phonon process, in contrast to conventional electron-phonon interaction, and a kind of effective Hubbard U through exchanging two chiral phonons is proposed. Taking two-dimensional diatomic honeycomb lattice as an example, we found this repulsive Hubbard U mediated by chiral phonons induces unconventional and high-temperature superconductivity. Moreover, the numerical calculations show an inverse isotope effect which is consistent with experimental observations in high-$T_c$ superconductors. Our finding on electron-chiral phonon and the associated Cooper pair provides a path to understand the high-$T_c$ superconductivity.