English

Magnetic order on a topological insulator surface with warping and proximity-induced superconductivity

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-04-08 v2 Superconductivity

Abstract

We determine the nature of the magnetic order on the surface of a topological insulator (TI) which develops due to hexagonal warping and the resulting Fermi surface (FS) nesting in the presence of a repulsive Hubbard interaction. For this purpose we investigate the spin susceptibility and derive a Landau theory to compare the different accessible phases. For a nearly hexagonal FS and sufficiently strong interaction the magnetic ground state is formed by a skyrmion lattice, i.e., by a superposition of three helical spin density waves which preserves C3_3 symmetry. The magnetic ground state is topologically nontrivial with a nonzero skyrmion charge, which can be stabilized and controlled by an applied magnetic field. By bringing the TI in proximity to a conventional superconductor one can engineer a C3_3-symmetric topological superconductor. We explore the modification of the phase diagram as well as the mutual influence between the skyrmion structure and a multipolar distribution of supercurrents, which can provide information about the underlying skyrmion charge.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1412.7416,
  title  = {Magnetic order on a topological insulator surface with warping and proximity-induced superconductivity},
  author = {Daniel Mendler and Panagiotis Kotetes and Gerd Schön},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.7416},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Main text: 15 pages and 11 figures; Appendix: 4 pages and 2 figures; v2: slight modifications and updated references