Unconventional superconductivity on a topological insulator

We study proximity-induced superconductivity on the surface of a topological insulator (TI), focusing on unconventional pairing. We find that the excitation spectrum becomes gapless for any spin-triplet pairing, such that both subgap bound states and Andreev reflection is strongly suppressed. For sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 104; no. 6; p. 067001
Main Authors Linder, Jacob, Tanaka, Yukio, Yokoyama, Takehito, Sudbø, Asle, Nagaosa, Naoto
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 12.02.2010
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Summary:We study proximity-induced superconductivity on the surface of a topological insulator (TI), focusing on unconventional pairing. We find that the excitation spectrum becomes gapless for any spin-triplet pairing, such that both subgap bound states and Andreev reflection is strongly suppressed. For spin-singlet pairing, the zero-energy surface state in the d(xy)-wave case becomes a Majorana fermion, in contrast with the situation realized in the topologically trivial high-T(c) cuprates. We also study the influence of a Zeeman field on the surface states. Both the magnitude and direction of this field are shown to strongly influence the transport properties, in contrast with the case without TI. We predict an experimental signature of the Majorana states via conductance spectroscopy.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.067001