The search for topological superconductors is one of the most pressing and challenging questions in condensed-matter and material research. Despite some early suggestions that doping a topological insulator might be a successful recipe to find topological superconductors, to date there is no general understanding of the relationship of the topology of the superconductor and the topology of its underlying normal state system. One of the major obstacles is the strong effect of the Fermi surface and its subsequent pairing tendencies within the Hubbard model framework, which usually prevents a detailed comparison between different topological superconducting systems. Here we present an analysis of doped insulators—topological and trivial—where the dominant Fermi surface effects have been equalized. Our approach allows us to study and compare superconducting instabilities of different normal state systems and present rigorous results about the influence of the normal state system's topology.

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• Superconductivity
• Topological superconductors
• Unconventional superconductors