Eur. Phys. J. B 53, 19-22 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00345-0

Superconductors with topological order

¹ INFN and Dipartimento di Fisica, University of Perugia, via A. Pascoli, 06100 Perugia, Italy
² Progetto Lagrange, Fondazione C.R.T. e Fondazione I.S.I. c/o Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino, 10124, Italy
³ InfoCodex S.A., Av. Louis-Casai 18, 1209 Geneva, Switzerland

Corresponding authors: ^a cristina.diamantini@pg.infn.it - ^b pasquale.sodano@pg.infn.it - ^c ca.trugenberger@InfoCodex.com

Received: 12 July 2006
Published online: 7 September 2006

Abstract

We propose a mechanism of superconductivity in which the order of the ground state does not arise from the usual Landau mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking but is rather of topological origin. The low-energy effective theory is formulated in terms of emerging gauge fields rather than a local order parameter and the ground state is degenerate on topologically non-trivial manifolds. The simplest example of this mechanism of superconductivity is concretely realized as global superconductivity in Josephson junction arrays.