Abstract
We find that the vortex bound states in superconducting topological semimetals are gapless owing to topological massless excitations in their normal states. We demonstrate this universal result in a variety of semimetals, including Dirac and Weyl semimetals, three-fold degenerate spin-1 fermions, spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl fermion semimetals and other exotic fermion semimetals. The formation of these gapless bound states is closely related to their Andreev specular reflection and propagating Andreev modes in π-phase superconductor-normal metal-superconductor junctions. We further demonstrate that these gapless states are topologically protected and can be derived from a topological pumping process.