English

Emergent Spin Hall phase at a Lifshitz transition from competing orders

Superconductivity 2014-11-25 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

The effects of competing orders, such as superconductivity and ferromagnetism, on a Fermi liquid are well established. A comprehensive understanding of such a competition in a metal whose Fermi surface has a non-trivial topology is yet to be achieved. Here, we address this question in a prototypical system: the 2D Rashba semimetal. We show that dominant superconductivity interplays with Rashba spin orbit interactions (SOI) in forming a novel intrinsic anomalous Hall effect (AHE) with gapless edge states of Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) quasiparticles. As in the case of itinerant ferromagnets, the intrinsic AHE arises from Berry curvature effects in the band structure. This phenomenon is robust even as sub-dominant ferromagnetism dramatically changes the nature of pairing symmetry. An emergent spin Hall phase involving a change in Fermi-surface topology is found to accompany this Lifshitz quantum phase transition. We demonstrate the coexistence of the original and novel AHE in the presence of weak disorder. We offer a comparison of our results with experiments on the two dimensional electron gas at oxide hetero-interfaces as well as make some testable predictions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.6539,
  title  = {Emergent Spin Hall phase at a Lifshitz transition from competing orders},
  author = {N. Mohanta and S. Bandopadhyay and S. Lal and A. Taraphder},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.6539},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

8 pages, 6 figures. Update: New title, extended discussions and analysis presented in supplementary materials sections, added figures and references

R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:12:07.320Z