Magnon-mediated superconductivity on the surface of a topological insulator

Abstract

We study superconductivity on the surface of a topological insulator, mediated by magnetic fluctuations in an adjacent ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic insulator. Superconductivity can arise from effective interactions between helical fermions induced by interfacial fermion-magnon interactions. For both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic insulators, these fermion-fermion interactions have the correct structure to facilitate pairing between particles located on the same side of the Fermi surface, also known as Amperean pairing. In antiferromagnets, the strength of the induced interactions can be enhanced by coupling the topological insulator asymmetrically to the two sublattices of the antiferromagnet. This effect is further amplified by next nearest neighbor frustration in the antiferromagnetic insulator. The enhancement makes the induced interactions significantly stronger in the antiferromagnetic case, as compared to the ferromagnetic case. These results indicate that an uncompensated antiferromagnetic interface might be a better candidate than a ferromagnetic interface for proximity-induced magnon-mediated superconductivity on the surface of a topological insulator.

12 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• Dirac materials
• Spin pumping and spin-transfer torques in antiferromagnets
• Above 400 K Robust Perpendicular Ferromagnetic Phase in a Topological Insulator
• Amperean Pairing Instability in the U(1) Spin Liquid State with Fermi Surface and Application to $\kappa -(BEDT-TTF{)}_{2}C{u}_2(CN{)}_3$
• Spin pumping and shot noise in ferrimagnets: bridging ferro- and antiferromagnets