Magnetoelectric coupling in superconductor-helimagnet heterostructures

Abstract

The Ginzburg-Landau free energy of a conventional superconductor coupled to a helimagnet is microscopically derived using functional field integral techniques. We show that the spin texture leads to a Lifshitz invariant in the free energy, which couples the momentum density of the superconducting condensate to the magnetization of the helimagnet. For helimagnets with a conical texture, the Lifshitz invariant yields a spatial modulation of the superconducting phase along the helical wavevector of the magnetic texture. Based on self-consistent numerical calculations, we verify the theoretical formalism by investigating a superconductor that contains a helical Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) chain. We demonstrate that the texture-induced magnetoelectric coupling produces a strong supercurrent along the YSR chain, which induces a detectable magnetic field.

Final version accepted by Physical Review B

References in corpus (8)

• Observation of Majorana Fermions in Ferromagnetic Atomic Chains on a Superconductor
• Non-Abelian Topological Orders and Majorana Fermions in Spin-Singlet Superconductors
• Composite Topological Excitations in Ferromagnet-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Spiral magnetic order and topological superconductivity in a chain of magnetic adatoms on a two-dimensional superconductor
• Magneto-Josephson effects in junctions with Majorana bound states
• Robustness of Majorana Modes and Minigaps in a Spin-Orbit-Coupled Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructure
• Tuning topological superconductivity in helical Shiba chains by supercurrent
• Supercurrent-Induced Spin-Orbit Torques

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Skyrmion-(Anti)Vortex Coupling in a Chiral Magnet-Superconductor Heterostructure
• Anatomy of Spin and Current Generation from Magnetization Gradients in Topological Insulators and Rashba Metals
• Long-range effect of a Zeeman field on the electric current through the helical metal-superconductor interface in Andreev interferometer
• Spontaneous generation of vortices by a nonuniform Zeeman field in a two-dimensional Rashba coupled superconductor
• Supercurrent vortices and Majorana zero modes induced by an inplane Zeeman field on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator
• Fraunhofer oscillations of the critical current at a varying Zeeman field in a spin-orbit coupled Josephson junction
• Field-Resilient Supercurrent Diode in a Multiferroic Josephson Junction
• Spin-orbit coupled bosons in one dimension: emergent gauge field and Lifshitz transition
• Interaction of magnons with plasmons in a system of antiferromagnetic insulators coupled to a superconductor microwave cavity through the interfacial exchange interaction
• New mechanisms to engineer magnetic skyrmions and topological superconductors