Anisotropic Rashba coupling to polar modes in KTaO3

Motivated by the discovery of superconductivity in KTaO3-based heterostructures, we study a pairing mechanism based on spin-orbit assisted coupling between the conduction electrons and the ferroelectric (FE) modes present in the material. We use ab initio frozen-phonon computations to show a linear-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:JPhys materials 2023-01, Vol.6 (1), p.014007
Main Authors: Venditti, Giulia, Temperini, Maria Eleonora, Barone, Paolo, Lorenzana, Jose, Gastiasoro, Maria N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular momentum
Anisotropy
Conduction electrons
Coupling
ferroelectric mode
Ferroelectricity
Heterostructures
Manifolds
Momentum
Rashba coupling
Superconductivity
unconventional superconductivity
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Summary:Motivated by the discovery of superconductivity in KTaO3-based heterostructures, we study a pairing mechanism based on spin-orbit assisted coupling between the conduction electrons and the ferroelectric (FE) modes present in the material. We use ab initio frozen-phonon computations to show a linear-in-momentum Rashba-like coupling with a strong angular dependence in momentum for the lower j=3/2 manifold, deviating from the conventional isotropic Rashba model. This implies the Rashba-like interaction with the polar modes has substantial L = 3 cubic harmonic corrections, which we quantify for each electronic band. The strong anisotropy of the Rashba interaction is captured by a microscopic toy model for the t2g electrons. We find its origin to be the angular dependence in electronic momentum imposed by the kinetic term on the degenerate j=3/2 manifold. A comparison between the toy model and ab initio results indicates that additional symmetry allowed terms beyond odd-parity spin-conserving inter-orbital hopping processes are needed to describe the Rashba-like polar interaction between the electrons and the soft FE mode.
ISSN:2515-7639
DOI:10.1088/2515-7639/acb017