Phys. Rev. B 95, 134508 (2017)

Motivated by recent findings on realizing topological phases in graphene by laser light, Kazuaki Takasan and co-workers from Kyoto University, Japan, have proposed a possible way to realize topological superconductivity in well-known materials. They discovered that topological superconductors can be realized in d-wave superconductors, such as cuprate, when irradiated by circularly polarized laser light. Essentially, they applied Floquet theory to a model of d-wave superconductors with Rashba spin–orbit coupling under irradiation of the laser light. They discovered that the system acquires a topologically non-trivial nature. They pointed out that their proposal has two advantages for experimental realization: first, in theory, the topologically non-trivial states can be realized by the infinitesimal intensity of laser light; second, the laser-induced magnetic field does not induce vortices that suppress the superconducting states. Thus, the proposed scheme provides a promising way to dynamically realize a topological superconductor in cuprates.