Spontaneous vortex-antivortex lattice and Majorana fermions in rhombohedral graphene

Abstract: The discovery of superconducting states in multilayer rhombohedral graphene with spin and valley polarization has raised an interesting question: how does superconductivity cope with time-reversal symmetry breaking? %In the normal state, spin and valley polarization break time-reversal symmetry, while trigonal warping enforces $C_{3z}$. Below the critical temperature, the superconducting phase displays signatures of chiral behavior and is stabilized by out-of-plane fields as large as $\sim 0.5\,\text{T}$. In this work, using Ginzburg-Landau theory and microscopic calculation, we predict the existence of a new superconducting state at low electron density, which exhibits a spontaneously formed lattice of vortices and antivortices hosting Majorana zero-modes in their cores. We further identify this vortex-antivortex lattice (VAL) state in the experimental phase diagram and describe its experimental manifestations.