English

Spontaneous supercurrent and ${\phi}$0 phase shift parallel to magnetized topological insulator interfaces

Superconductivity 2017-10-20 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Materials Science Strongly Correlated Electrons Quantum Physics

Abstract

Employing a Keldysh-Eilenberger technique, we theoretically study the generation of a sponta- neous supercurrent and the appearance of the ϕ{\phi}0 phase shift parallel to uniformly in-plane mag- netized superconducting interfaces made of the surface states of a three-dimensional topological insulator. We consider two weakly coupled uniformly magnetized superconducting surfaces where a macroscopic phase difference between the s-wave superconductors can be controlled externally. We find that, depending on the magnetization strength and orientation on each side, a spontaneous supercurrent due to the ϕ{\phi}0-states flows parallel to the interface at the junction location. Our calcula- tions demonstrate that nonsinusoidal phase relations of current components with opposite directions result in maximal spontaneous supercurrent at phase differences close to π{\pi}. We also study the An- dreev subgap channels at the interface and show that the spin-momentum locking phenomenon in the surface states can be uncovered through density of states studies. We finally discuss realistic experimental implications of our findings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.06436,
  title  = {Spontaneous supercurrent and ${\phi}$0 phase shift parallel to magnetized topological insulator interfaces},
  author = {Mohammad Alidoust and Hossein Hamzehpour},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.06436},
  year   = {2017}
}
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