Topological Phase Transitions and a Two-Dimensional Weyl Superconductor in a Half-Metal/Superconductor Heterostructure

Abstract

We find a series of topological phase transitions in a half-metal/superconductor heterostructure, by tuning the direction of the magnetization of the half-metal film. These include transitions between a topological superconducting phase with a bulk gap and another phase without a bulk gap but has a ubiquitous local gap. At the same time, the edge states change from counter-propagating Majorana edge modes to unidirectional Majorana edge modes. In addition, we find transitions between the second phase and a nodal phase which turns out to be a two-dimensional Weyl superconductor with Fermi line edge states. We identify the topological invariants relevant to each phase and the symmetry that protects the Weyl superconductivity phase.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (16)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in Ferromagnetic Atomic Chains on a Superconductor
• Phase transition between the quantum spin Hall and insulator phases in 3D: emergence of a topological gapless phase
• Topological response in Weyl semimetals and the chiral anomaly
• Non-Abelian Topological Order in S-Wave Superfluids of Ultracold Fermionic Atoms
• $p_x+i{p}_y$ superfluid from s-wave interactions of fermionic cold atoms
• Proximity effect at the superconductor - topological insulator interface
• Quantum Thermal Hall Effect in a Time-Reversal-Symmetry-Broken Topological Superconductor in Two Dimensions : Approach From Bulk Calculations
• Chiral magnetic effect in two-band lattice model of Weyl semimetal
• Crossed surface flat bands of Weyl semimetal superconductors
• Surface spectral function in the superconducting state of a topological insulator
• Novel anisotropic spin singlet pairings in Cu${}_x$Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ and Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$
• Effective low energy theory for surface Andreev bound states of superconducting phases in generalized Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang models

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Searching for two-dimensional Weyl superconductors in heterostructures
• Larkin-Ovchinnikov state of superconducting Weyl metals: Fundamental differences between pairings restricted and extended in the $\text{k}$-space