Route to Topological Superconductivity via Magnetic Field Rotation

Abstract

The verification of topological superconductivity has become a major experimental challenge. Apart from the very few spin-triplet superconductors with p-wave pairing symmetry, another candidate system is a conventional, two-dimensional (2D) s-wave superconductor in a magnetic field with a sufficiently strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Typically, the required magnetic field to convert the superconductor into a topologically non-trivial state is however by far larger than the upper critical field H_c2, which excludes its realization. In this article, we argue that this problem can be overcome by rotating the magnetic field into the superconducting plane. We explore the character of the superconducting state upon changing the strength and the orientation of the magnetic field and show that a topological state, established for a sufficiently strong out-of-plane magnetic field, indeed extends to an in-plane field orientation. We present a three-band model applicable to the superconducting interface between LaAlO_3 and SrTiO_3, which should fulfil the necessary conditions to realize a topological superconductor.

References in corpus (9)

• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Electric Field Control of the LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ Interface Ground State
• Non-Abelian Topological Order in S-Wave Superfluids of Ultracold Fermionic Atoms
• Topological Phases of Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors: Edge States, Majorana Fermions, and the Non-Abelian Statistics
• Theory of spin-orbit coupling at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces and SrTiO3 surfaces
• Phase competition in trisected superconducting dome
• Topological superconductivity and unconventional pairing in oxide interfaces
• Rashba induced magnetoconductance oscillations in the LaAlO3-SrTiO3 heterostructure
• Magnetic and Superconducting Ordering at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Interfaces

Cited by in corpus (25)

• Transport in two-dimensional topological materials: recent developments in experiment and theory
• Time-Reversal-Symmetry-Breaking Superconductivity in Epitaxial Bismuth/Nickel Bilayers
• Nodeless bulk superconductivity in the time-reversal symmetry breaking Bi/Ni bilayer system
• Evolution of topological superconductivity by orbital selective confinement in oxide nanowires
• Ultrathin Films of Superconducting Metals as a Platform for Topological Superconductivity
• Theory of superconductivity mediated by Rashba coupling in incipient ferroelectrics
• Tunable spin and orbital Edelstein effect at (111) LaAlO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ interface
• Oxygen vacancies and hydrogen doping in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures: electronic properties and impact on surface and interface reconstruction
• Critical magnetic field of ultrathin superconducting films and interfaces
• Momentum-Space Spin Texture in a Topological Superconductor
• The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling in a 2D oxide interface
• Majorana fermions in finite-size strips with in-plane magnetic fields
• Supercurrent as a Probe for Topological Superconductivity in Magnetic Adatom Chains
• Searching for two-dimensional Weyl superconductors in heterostructures
• Interplay between singlet and triplet pairings in multi-band two-dimensional oxide superconductors
• Chiral twodimensional p-wave superfluid from s-wave pairing in the BEC regime
• Spin-orbital polarization of Majorana edge states in oxides nanowires
• Strain-induced topological phase transition at (111) SrTiO${}_3$-based heterostructures
• Accurate projective two-band description of topological superfluidity in spin-orbit-coupled Fermi gases
• Majorana-Weyl cones in ferroelectric superconductors
• Coexistence of topological and nontopological Fermi-superfluid phases
• Electronic transport in thin films of BaPbO${}_3$: Unraveling two-dimensional quantum effects
• Antichiral edge states and Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces in a two-dimensional proximity-induced superconductor
• Signatures of topological phase transitions in the s-wave superconductor at finite temperature
• Nonequilibrium Green's function approach to multi-band Cooper-pair transport: linear magnetoresistance effect due to nonunitary superconductivity