Mechanism for Unconventional Superconductivity in the Hole-Doped Rashba-Hubbard Model

Abstract

Motivated by the recent resurgence of interest in topological superconductivity, we study superconducting pairing instabilities of the hole-doped Rashba-Hubbard model on the square lattice with first- and second-neighbor hopping. Within the random phase approximation, we compute the spin-fluctuation-mediated pairing interactions as a function of filling. Rashba spin-orbit coupling splits the spin degeneracies of the bands, which leads to two van Hove singularities at two different fillings. We find that, for a doping region in between these two van Hove fillings, the spin fluctuations exhibit a strong ferromagnetic contribution. Because of these ferromagnetic fluctuations, there is a strong tendency towards spin-triplet f-wave pairing within this filling region, resulting in a topologically nontrivial phase.