Minimal Models and Transport Properties of Unconventional p-Wave Magnets.

New unconventional compensated magnets with a p-wave spin polarization protected by a composite time-reversal translation symmetry have been proposed in the wake of altermagnets. To facilitate the experimental discovery and applications of these unconventional magnets, we construct an effective analytical model. The effective model is based on a minimal tight-binding model for unconventional p-wave magnets that clarifies the relation to other magnets with p-wave spin-polarized bands.

Optical conductivity of the Majorana mode at the - and -wave topological superconductor edge.

The Majorana fermion offers fascinating possibilities such as non-Abelian statistics and nonlocal robust qubits, and hunting it is one of the most important topics in current condensed matter physics. Most of the efforts have been focused on the Majorana bound state at zero energy in terms of scanning tunneling spectroscopy searching for the quantized conductance. On the other hand, a chiral Majorana edge channel appears at the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator when engineering an interface between proximity-induced superconductivity and ferromagnetism.

Inverse Spin-Hall Effect and Spin Swapping in Spin-Split Superconductors.

When a spin-splitting field is introduced to a thin film superconductor, the spin currents polarized along the field couples to energy currents that can only decay via inelastic scattering. We study spin and energy injection into such a superconductor where spin-orbit impurity scattering yields inverse spin-Hall and spin-swapping currents. We show that the combined presence of a spin-splitting field, superconductivity, and inelastic scattering gives rise to a strong enhancement of the ordinary inverse spin-Hall effect, as well as unique inverse spin-Hall and spin-swapping signals orders of magnitude stronger than the ordinary inverse spin-Hall signal.

dc Josephson Effect in Altermagnets.

The ability of magnetic materials to modify superconductors is an active research area for possible applications in thermoelectricity, quantum sensing, and spintronics. We consider the fundamental properties of the Josephson effect in a class of magnetic materials that recently have attracted much attention: altermagnets. We show that despite having no net magnetization and a band structure qualitatively different from ferromagnets and from conventional antiferromagnets without spin-split bands, altermagnets induce 0-π oscillations.

Superconducting Proximity Effect and Long-Ranged Triplets in Dirty Metallic Antiferromagnets.

Antiferromagnets have no net spin splitting on the scale of the superconducting coherence length. Despite this, antiferromagnets have been observed to suppress superconductivity in a similar way as ferromagnets, a phenomenon that still lacks a clear understanding. We find that this effect can be explained by the role of impurities in antiferromagnets.

Observation of Magnetic State Dependent Thermoelectricity in Superconducting Spin Valves.

Superconductor-ferromagnet tunnel junctions demonstrate giant thermoelectric effects that are being exploited to engineer ultrasensitive terahertz radiation detectors. Here, we experimentally observe the recently predicted complete magnetic control over thermoelectric effects in a superconducting spin valve, including the dependence of its sign on the magnetic state of the spin valve. The description of the experimental results is improved by the introduction of an interfacial domain wall in the spin filter layer interfacing the superconductor.

Extreme enhancement of superconductivity in epitaxial aluminum near the monolayer limit.

BCS theory has been widely successful at describing elemental bulk superconductors. Yet, as the length scales of such superconductors approach the atomic limit, dimensionality as well as the environment of the superconductor can lead to drastically different and unpredictable superconducting behavior. Here, we report a threefold enhancement of the superconducting critical temperature and gap size in ultrathin epitaxial Al films on Si(111), when approaching the 2D limit, based on high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) measurements.

Controllable Enhancement of p-Wave Superconductivity via Magnetic Coupling to a Conventional Superconductor.

Unconventional superconductors are of high interest due to their rich physics, a topical example being topological edge states associated with p-wave superconductivity. A practical obstacle in studying such systems is the very low critical temperature T_{c} that is required to realize a p-wave superconducting phase in a material. We predict that the T_{c} of an intrinsic p-wave superconductor can be significantly enhanced by coupling to a conventional s-wave or d-wave superconductor with a higher critical temperature via an atomically thin ferromagnetic (F) layer.

Magnon Spin Current Induced by Triplet Cooper Pair Supercurrents.

At the interface between a ferromagnetic insulator and a superconductor there is a coupling between the spins of the two materials. We show that when a supercurrent carried by triplet Cooper pairs flows through the superconductor, the coupling induces a magnon spin current in the adjacent ferromagnetic insulator. The effect is dominated by Cooper pairs polarized in the same direction as the ferromagnetic insulator, so that charge and spin supercurrents produce similar results.

Superconductivity assisted change of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in V/MgO/Fe junctions.

Controlling the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in thin films has received considerable attention in recent years due to its technological importance. PMA based devices usually involve heavy-metal (oxide)/ferromagnetic-metal bilayers, where, thanks to interfacial spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the in-plane (IP) stability of the magnetisation is broken. Here we show that in V/MgO/Fe(001) epitaxial junctions with competing in-plane and out-of-plane (OOP) magnetic anisotropies, the SOC mediated interaction between a ferromagnet (FM) and a superconductor (SC) enhances the effective PMA below the superconducting transition.

Self-consistent solution for the magnetic exchange interaction mediated by a superconductor.

We theoretically determine the magnetic exchange interaction between two ferromagnets coupled by a superconductor using a tight-binding lattice model. The main purpose of this study is to determine how the self-consistently determined superconducting state influences the exchange interaction and the preferred ground-state of the system, including the role of impurity scattering. We find that the superconducting state eliminates RKKY-like oscillations for a sufficiently large superconducting gap, making the anti-parallel orientation the ground state of the system.

Controlling the Superconducting Transition by Rotation of an Inversion Symmetry-Breaking Axis.

We consider a hybrid structure where a material with Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling is proximity coupled to a conventional superconductor. We find that the superconducting critical temperature T_{c} can be tuned by rotating the vector n characterizing the axis of broken inversion symmetry. This is explained by a leakage of s-wave singlet Cooper pairs out of the superconducting region, and by conversion of s-wave singlets into other types of correlations, among these s-wave odd-frequency pairs robust to impurity scattering.

Prediction of a Paramagnetic Meissner Effect in Voltage-Biased Superconductor-Normal-Metal Bilayers.

Conventional superconductors respond to external magnetic fields by generating diamagnetic screening currents. However, theoretical work has shown that one can engineer systems where the screening current is paramagnetic, causing them to attract magnetic flux-a prediction that has recently been experimentally verified. In contrast to previous studies, we show that this effect can be realized in simple superconductor-normal-metal structures with no special properties, using only a simple voltage bias to drive the system out of equilibrium.

Controlling spin supercurrents via nonequilibrium spin injection.

We propose a mechanism whereby spin supercurrents can be manipulated in superconductor/ferromagnet proximity systems via nonequilibrium spin injection. We find that if a spin supercurrent exists in equilibrium, a nonequilibrium spin accumulation will exert a torque on the spins transported by this current. This interaction causes a new spin supercurrent contribution to manifest out of equilibrium, which is proportional to and polarized perpendicularly to both the injected spins and the equilibrium spin current.

Current Control of Magnetism in Two-Dimensional Fe_{3}GeTe_{2}.

The recent discovery of magnetism in two-dimensional van der Waals systems opens the door to discovering exciting physics. We investigate how a current can control the ferromagnetic properties of such materials. Using symmetry arguments, we identify a recently realized system in which the current-induced spin torque is particularly simple and powerful.

Field-Free Nucleation of Antivortices and Giant Vortices in Nonsuperconducting Materials.

Giant vortices with higher phase winding than 2π are usually energetically unfavorable, but geometric symmetry constraints on a superconductor in a magnetic field are known to stabilize such objects. Here, we show via microscopic calculations that giant vortices can appear in intrinsically nonsuperconducting materials, even without any applied magnetic field. The enabling mechanism is the proximity effect to a host superconductor where a current flows, and we also demonstrate that antivortices can appear in this setup.

Author Correction: Induced unconventional superconductivity on the surface states of BiTe topological insulator.

The original version of this Article contained an error in Fig. 6b. In the top scattering process, while the positioning of both arrows was correct, the colours were switched: the first arrow was red and the second arrow was blue, rather than the correct order of blue then red.

Author Correction: Induced unconventional superconductivity on the surface states of BiTe topological insulator.

The original version of this Article omitted the following from the Acknowledgements:"This work was partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 262633, QuSpin."This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the article.

Controlling supercurrents and their spatial distribution in ferromagnets.

Spin-triplet Cooper pairs induced in ferromagnets form the centrepiece of the emerging field of superconducting spintronics. Usually the focus is on the spin-polarization of the triplets, potentially enabling low-dissipation magnetization switching. However, the magnetic texture which provides the fundamental mechanism for generating triplets also permits control over the spatial distribution of supercurrent.

Induced unconventional superconductivity on the surface states of BiTe topological insulator.

Topological superconductivity is central to a variety of novel phenomena involving the interplay between topologically ordered phases and broken-symmetry states. The key ingredient is an unconventional order parameter, with an orbital component containing a chiral p  + ip wave term. Here we present phase-sensitive measurements, based on the quantum interference in nanoscale Josephson junctions, realized by using BiTe topological insulator.

Triplet Cooper pairs induced in diffusive s-wave superconductors interfaced with strongly spin-polarized magnetic insulators or half-metallic ferromagnets.

Interfacing superconductors with strongly spin-polarized magnetic materials opens the possibility to discover new spintronic devices in which spin-triplet Cooper pairs play a key role. Motivated by the recent derivation of spin-polarized quasiclassical boundary conditions capable of describing such a scenario in the diffusive limit, we consider the emergent physics in hybrid structures comprised of a conventional s-wave superconductor (e.g.

Spin Seebeck effect and thermoelectric phenomena in superconducting hybrids with magnetic textures or spin-orbit coupling.

We theoretically consider the spin Seebeck effect, the charge Seebeck coefficient, and the thermoelectric figure of merit in superconducting hybrid structures including either magnetic textures or intrinsic spin-orbit coupling. We demonstrate that large magnitudes for all these quantities are obtainable in Josephson-based systems with either zero or a small externally applied magnetic field. This provides an alternative to the thermoelectric effects generated in high-field (~1 T) superconducting hybrid systems, which were recently experimentally demonstrated.

Analytically determined topological phase diagram of the proximity-induced gap in diffusive n-terminal Josephson junctions.

Multiterminal Josephson junctions have recently been proposed as a route to artificially mimic topological matter with the distinct advantage that its properties can be controlled via the superconducting phase difference, giving rise to Weyl points in 4-terminal geometries. A key goal is to accurately determine when the system makes a transition from a gapped to non-gapped state as a function of the phase differences in the system, the latter effectively playing the role of quasiparticle momenta in conventional topological matter. We here determine the proximity gap phase diagram of diffusive n-terminal Josephson junctions (), both numerically and analytically, by identifying a class of solutions to the Usadel equation at zero energy in the full proximity effect regime.

Microwave control of the superconducting proximity effect and minigap in magnetic and normal metals.

We demonstrate theoretically that microwave radiation applied to superconducting proximity structures controls the minigap and other spectral features in the density of states of normal and magnetic metals, respectively. Considering both a bilayer and Josephson junction geometry, we show that microwaves with frequency ω qualitatively alters the spectral properties of the system: inducing a series of resonances, controlling the minigap size E, and even replacing the minigap with a strong peak of quasiparticle accumulation at zero energy when ω = E. The interaction between light and Cooper pairs may thus open a route to active control of quantum coherent phenomena in superconducting proximity structures.

Dynamical tuning between nearly perfect reflection, absorption, and transmission of light via graphene/dielectric structures.

Exerting well-defined control over the reflection (R), absorption (A), and transmission (T) of electromagnetic waves is a key objective in quantum optics. To this end, one often utilizes hybrid structures comprised of elements with different optical properties in order to achieve features such as high R or high A for incident light. A desirable goal would be the possibility to tune between all three regimes of nearly perfect reflection, absorption, and transmission within the same device, thus swapping between the cases R → 1, A → 1, and T → 1 dynamically.