Superfluid stiffness of superconductors with delicate topology

Abstract

We consider superconductivity in two-dimensional delicate topological bands, where the total Chern number vanishes but the Brillouin zone can be divided into subregions with a quantized nontrivial Chern number. We formulate a lower bound on the geometric contribution to the superfluid weight in terms of the sum of the absolute values of these sub-Brillouin zone Chern numbers. We verify this bound in Chern dartboard insulators, where the delicate topology is protected by mirror symmetry. In iso-orbital models, where the mirror representation is the same along all high-symmetry lines, the lower bound increases linearly with the number of mirror planes. This work points to delicate bands as promising candidates for particularly stable superconductivity, especially in narrow bands where the kinetic energy is suppressed due to lattice effects.