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Register a new userTopological superconductivity from magnetic impurities on monolayer NbSe$_2$
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Added by
Doru Cristian Sticlet
Publication date
2019
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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Recent experimental studies have found that magnetic impurities deposited on superconducting monolayer NbSe$_2$ generate coupled Yu-Shiba-Rusinov bound states. Here we consider ferromagnetic chains of impurities which induce a Yu-Shiba-Rusinov band and harbor Majorana bound states at the chain edges. We show that these topological phases are stabilized by strong Ising spin-orbit coupling in the monolayer and examine the conditions under which Majorana phases appear as a function of distance between impurities, impurity spin projection, orientation of chains on the surface of the monolayer, and strength of magnetic exchange energy between impurity and superconductor.
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Using van der Waals tunnel junctions, we perform spectroscopy of superconducting $mathrm{NbSe_2}$ flakes, of thicknesses ranging from 2--25 monolayers, measuring the quasiparticle density of states as a function of applied in-plane magnetic field up to 33T. In flakes up to $approx$ 15 monolayers thick, we find that the density of states is well-described by a single band superconductor. In these thin samples, the magnetic field acts primarily on the spin (vs orbital) degree of freedom of the electrons, and superconductivity is further protected by Ising spin-orbit coupling (ISOC), which pins Cooper pair spins out-of-plane. The superconducting energy gap, extracted from our tunnelling spectra, decreases as a function of the applied magnetic field. However, in bilayer $mathrm{NbSe_2}$, close to the critical field (up to 30T, much larger than the Pauli limit), superconductivity appears to be even more robust than expected if only ISOC is considered. This can be explained by a predicted subdominant triplet component of the order parameter, coupled to the dominant singlet component at finite field. This equal-spin, odd-parity triplet state arises from the non-colinearity between the applied magnetic field and the Ising field.
The surface states of a topological insulator are described by an emergent relativistic massless Dirac equation in 2+1 dimensions. In contrast to graphene, there is an odd number of Dirac points, and the electron spin is directly coupled to the momentum. We show that a magnetic impurity opens up a local gap and suppresses the local density of states. Furthermore, the Dirac electronic states mediate an RKKY interaction among the magnetic impurities which is always ferromagnetic, whenever the chemical potential lies near the Dirac point. These effects can be directly measured in STM experiments. We also study the case of quenched disorder through a renormalization group analysis.
Monolayer NbSe$_2$ has recently been shown to be a 2-dimensional superconductor, with a competing charge-density wave (CDW) order. This work investigates the electronic structure of monolayer NbSe$_2$ based on first principles calculations, focusing on charge and magnetic orders in connection to the superconductivity. It is found that decreased screening in the monolayer NbSe$_2$ with a perfect lattice exhibits magnetic instability, which is removed by the formation of CDW. Two energetically competitive but distinct $3times3$ CDW structures are revealed computationally, which have a significant impact on the Fermi surface. The relations of the potential CDW phases with experimental structure and the coexisting superconductivity are discussed.
The layered semimetal WTe_2 has recently been found to be a two-dimensional topological insulator (2D TI) when thinned down to a single monolayer, with conducting helical edge channels. We report here that intrinsic superconductivity can be induced in this monolayer 2D TI by mild electrostatic doping, at temperatures below 1 K. The 2D TI-superconductor transition can be easily driven by applying a just a small gate voltage. This discovery offers new possibilities for gate-controlled devices combining superconductivity and topology, and could provide a basis for quantum information schemes based on topological protection.
Molecular spintronics hinges on the detailed understanding of electronic and magnetic properties of molecules interfaced with various materials. Here we demonstrate with ab-initio simulations that the prototypical Co-phthalocyanine (CoPc) molecule can surprisingly develop multi-spin states once deposited on the two-dimensional 2H-NbSe$_2$ layer. Conventional calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) show the existence of low, regular and high spin states, which reduce to regular and high spins states once correlations are incorporated with a DFT+$U$ approach. Depending on $U$, the ground state is either the low spin or high spin state with energy differences affected by the molecular orientation on top of the substrate. Our results are compared to recent scanning probe measurements and motivate further theoretical and experimental studies on the unveiled rich multi-magnetic behavior of CoPc molecule.
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