Proximity-induced superconductivity in Weyl semimetals

Abstract

We study superconducting proximity effects in Weyl Semimetals (WSM) with broken time-reversal symmetry by tunnel-coupling one of its surfaces to an s-wave superconductor using the Green's function approach. We find that the band structure develops coherence peaks, but despite the presence of metallic states in the bulk, the coherence peaks do not extend far into the bulk and remain confined to a few layers close to the interface, similar to the proximity effect in the Topological Insulators (TI) which are gapped in the bulk. The Weyl nodes remain unaffected, and in that sense, no true gap develops. We also study the induced p- and s-wave pairing amplitudes classified by their symmetries, as a function of the various parameters of the theory, and note the exponential decay of the induced pairings in the bulk both in the TI and the WSM, even at finite chemical potential.