Abstract

The material realization of charge-4e/6e superconductivity (SC) is a big challenge. Here, we propose to realize charge-4e SC in maximally-twisted homobilayers, such as 45∘-twisted bilayer cuprates and 30∘-twisted bilayer graphene, referred to as twist-bilayer quasicrystals (TB-QC). When each monolayer hosts a pairing state with the largest pairing angular momentum, previous studies have found that the second-order interlayer Josephson coupling would drive chiral topological SC (TSC) in the TB-QC. Here we propose that, above the Tc of the chiral TSC, either charge-4e SC or chiral metal can arise as vestigial phases, depending on the ordering of the total- and relative-pairing-phase fields of the two layers. Based on a thorough symmetry analysis to get the low-energy effective Hamiltonian, we conduct a combined renormalization-group and Monte-Carlo study and obtain the phase diagram, which includes the charge-4e SC and chiral metal phases.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43782-2