Magnetic Field-Induced “Mirage” Gap in an Ising Superconductor

Superconductivity is commonly destroyed by a magnetic field due to orbital or Zeeman-induced pair breaking. Surprisingly, the spin-valley locking in a two-dimensional superconductor with spin-orbit interaction makes the superconducting state resilient to large magnetic fields. We investigate the spe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2021-06, Vol.126 (23), p.1-237001, Article 237001
Main Authors: Tang, Gaomin, Bruder, Christoph, Belzig, Wolfgang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ising model
Locking
Magnetic fields
Magnetic properties
Magnetism
Spin-orbit interactions
Superconductivity
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Summary:Superconductivity is commonly destroyed by a magnetic field due to orbital or Zeeman-induced pair breaking. Surprisingly, the spin-valley locking in a two-dimensional superconductor with spin-orbit interaction makes the superconducting state resilient to large magnetic fields. We investigate the spectral properties of such an Ising superconductor in a magnetic field taking into account disorder. The interplay of the in-plane magnetic field and the Ising spin-orbit coupling leads to noncollinear effective fields. We find that the emerging singlet and triplet pairing correlations manifest themselves in the occurrence of "mirage" gaps: at (high) energies of the order of the spin-orbit coupling strength, a gaplike structure in the spectrum emerges that mirrors the main superconducting gap. We show that these mirage gaps are signatures of the equal-spin triplet finite-energy pairing correlations and due to their odd parity are sensitive to intervalley scattering.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.237001