We conducted a systematic study of the disorder dependence of the termination of superconductivity, at high magnetic fields (B), of amorphous indium oxide films. Our lower disorder films show conventional behavior where superconductivity is terminated with a transition to a metallic state at a well-defined critical field, Bc2. Our higher disorder samples undergo a B-induced transition into a strongly insulating state, which terminates at higher B's forming an insulating peak. We demonstrate that the B terminating this peak coincides with Bc2 of the lower disorder samples. Additionally we show that, beyond this field, these samples enter a different insulating state in which the magnetic field dependence of the resistance is weak. These results provide crucial evidence for the importance of Cooper-pairing in the insulating peak regime.
Cooper Pair Insulator phase induced in amorphous Pb$_0.9$Bi$_0.1$ thin films
在一些强无序薄膜系统的超导-绝缘体相变附近出现了库珀对绝缘体（CPI）相。最近的许多研究集中在驱动潜在的库珀对本地化的机制。我们目前的数据显示，CPI相的发展，在非晶Pb $_{0.9}$ Bi $_{0.1}$膜沉积到纳米多孔阳极氧化铝表面上，正如它已被证明为发展的a-Bi膜。这一结果证实了CPI相由于衬底的结构而出现的断言。它支持的图片，纳米薄膜厚度的变化引起的基板驱动本地化。此外，这意味着CPI相可以在可以沉积到该表面上的任何超导材料中被诱导。
We consider the surface states of a spherical topological insulator piecewise-terminated by superconductivity or ferromagnetism over various regions of the spherical surface. Such terminations gap the surface states by breaking U(1) particle-number symmetry or time-reversal symmetry, respectively. Interfaces and trijunctions between differently terminated surface regions can host propagating and bound Majorana modes, and the finite size of the spherical system makes it easily amenable to numerical analysis via exact diagonalization of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonian within a truncated Hil…
The quantum entanglement between two qubits is crucial for applications in the quantum communication. After the entanglement of photons was experimentally realized, much effort has been taken to exploit the entangled electrons in solid-state systems. Here, we propose a Cooper-pair splitter, which can generate spatially-separated but entangled electrons, in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator proximity-coupled with a superconductor. After coupling with a superconductor, the chiral edge states of the quantum anomalous Hall insulator can still survive, making the backscattering impossible. Thus, t…
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. Our findings demonstrate a way of converting Cooper pair supercurrents to magnon spin currents.
Rapid miniaturization of electronic devices and circuits demands profound understanding of fluctuation phenomena at the nanoscale. Superconducting nanowires -- serving as important building blocks for such devices -- may seriously suffer from fluctuations which tend to destroy long-range order and suppress superconductivity. In particular, quantum phase slips (QPS) proliferating at low temperatures may turn a quasi-one-dimensional superconductor into a resistor or an insulator. Here, we introduce a physical concept of QPS-controlled localization of Cooper pairs that may occur even in uniform n…
A zero-temperature magnetic-field-driven superconductor to insulator transition (SIT) in quasi-two-dimensional superconductors is expected to occur when the applied magnetic-field crosses a certain critical value. A fundamental question is whether this transition is due to the localization of Cooper pairs or due to the destruction of them. Here we address this question by studying the SIT in amorphous WSi. Transport measurements reveal the localization of Cooper pairs at a quantum critical field B_c^1 (Bose-insulator), with a product of the correlation length and dynamical exponents zv~4/3 nea…
We demonstrate theoretically that a dissipationless spin current can flow a long distance through a diffusive normal metal by using superconductors interfaced with magnetic insulators. The magnitude of this spin supercurrent is controlled via the magnetization orientation of the magnetic insulators. The spin supercurrent obtained in this way is conserved in the normal metal just like the charge-current and interestingly has a term which is independent of the superconducting phase difference. The quantum state of the system can be switched between 0 and $π$ by reversing the insulators from a pa…
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. Nb, Al) and either strongly spin-polarized ferromagnetic insulators (e.g. EuO, GdN) or halfmetallic ferromagnets (e.g. CrO2, LCMO). In contrast to most pre…
Experiments show that the Cooper pair transport in the insulator phase that forms at thin film superconductor to insulator transitions (SIT) is simply activated. This activated behavior depends on the microscopic factors that drive the localization of the Cooper pairs. To test proposed models, we investigated how a perturbation that weakens Cooper pair binding, magnetic impurity doping, affects the characteristic activation energy, $T_0$. The data show that $T_0$ decreases monotonically with doping in films tuned farther from the SIT and increases and peaks in films that are closer to the SIT …
Bosonic phases across the superconductor-insulator transition in infinite-layer samarium nickelate
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Quantum Science Center of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area（粤港澳大湾区量子科学中心）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学）；Shenzhen Research Institute of City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学深圳研究院）；Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Peking University（北京大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
We look back on the turning point of the concept of individual electron carrier and paired electrons carrier in superconductivity history, look back on the magnetic flux quantization interpretation and experiment, reference the new discovery of new phenomena including the hc/e magnetic flux periodicity and the scaling law of transition temperature of superconducting thin films. The conclusion is: In a circuit including only one electron, the magnetic flux period is hc/e in general, but hc/(2e) in the first step starting with zero flux. Early experiments had not observed hc/e periodicity becaus…
We unveil the microscopic origin of the topologically ordered counterpart of the s-wave superconductor in this work. For this, we employ the recently developed unitary renormalisation group (URG) method on a generalised model of 2D electrons attractive interactions. The effective Hamiltonian obtained at the stable low-energy fixed point of the RG flow corresponds to a gapped, insulating state of quantum matter we call the Cooper pair insulator (CPI). We show that the CPI ground state manifold displays several signatures of topological order, including a four-fold degeneracy when placed on the …
Superconductivity forms out of the condensation of Cooper pairs of electrons. The mechanism by which Cooper pairs are created in non-conventional superconductors is often elusive because experimental signatures that connect a specific pairing mechanism to the properties of superconducting state are rare. The recently discovered superconducting oxide-insulator/KTaO$_3$ interface may offer clues about its origins. Here we observe distinct dependences of the superconducting transition temperature Tc on carrier density n$_{2D}$ for electron gases formed at KTaO$_3$ (111), (001) and (110) interface…
Bound states at sharp corners have been widely viewed as the hallmark of two-dimensional second-order topological insulators and superconductors. In this work, we show that the existence of sublattice degrees of freedom can enrich the tunability of bound states on the boundary and hence lift the constraint on their locations. We take the Kane-Mele model with honeycomb-lattice structure to illustrate the underlying physics. With the introduction of an in-plane exchange field to the model, we find that the boundary Dirac mass induced by the exchange field has a sensitive dependence on the bounda…
Magnetic-field tuned superconductor to insulator transition was observed in a novel hybrid system of granular superconducting indium, deposited on indium oxide thin film, which exhibits global superconductivity at low magnetic fields. We have used annealing to tune the coupling to lie just at the borderline where superconductivity in the underlying InOx is suppressed, which is also close to the metal-insulator transition of the InOx. The hybrid system exhibits a "giant" magnetoresistance above the H-SIT, with critical behavior that manifests the duality between Cooper pairs and vortices.
We present results of measurements obtained from a mesoscopic ring of a highly disordered superconductor. Superimposed on a smooth magnetoresistance background we find periodic oscillations with a period that is independent of the strength of the magnetic field. The period of the oscillations is consistent with charge transport by Cooper pairs. The oscillations persist unabated for more than 90 periods, through the transition to the insulating phase, up to our highest field of 12 T.
Superconductor-Ferromagnet (SF) heterostructures are of interest due to numerous phenomena related to the spin-dependent interaction of Cooper pairs with the magnetization. Here we address the effects of a magnetic insulator on the density of states of a superconductor based on a recently developed boundary condition for strongly spin-dependent interfaces. We show that the boundary to a magnetic insulator has a similar effect like the presence of magnetic impurities. In particular we find that the impurity effects of strongly scattering localized spins leading to the formation of Shiba bands c…
We provide a microscopic-level derivation of earlier results showing that, in the critical vicinity of the superconductor-to-insulator transition (SIT), disorder and localization become negligible and the structure of the emergent phases is determined by topological effects arising from the competition between two quantum orders, superconductivity and superinsulation. We find that, around the critical point, the ground state is a composite incompressible quantum fluid of Cooper pairs and vortices coexisting with an intertwined Wigner crystal for the excess (with respect to integer filling) exc…
Bulk electronic state of superconducting topological insulator
研究了以拓扑绝缘体为母体材料的超导拓扑绝缘体的电子性质。本文计算了L。Fu和E. Berg（Phys. Rev. Lett. 105，097001）。由于四对中的三对的比热温度依赖性的线形几乎相同，因此很难简单地从比热中识别它们。另一方面，我们得到了反映库珀对自旋结构的各种自旋磁化率随温度的变化。本文提出通过改变外加磁场的方向，测量奈特位移，可以确定超导拓扑绝缘体的对对称性。
We address the origin of the Cooper pairs in high-$T_c$ cuprates and the unique nature of the superconducting (SC) condensate. Itinerant holes in an antiferromagnetic background form pairs spontaneously, without any `glue', defining a new quantum object the `pairon'. In the incoherent pseudogap phase, above $T_c$ or within the vortex core, the pairon binding energies are distributed statistically, forming a `Cooper-pair glass'. Contrary to conventional SC, it is the mutual pair-pair interaction that is responsable for the condensation. We give a natural explanation for the {\it ergodic rigidit…
We look for unifying aspects behind superconductivity in aromatic hydrocarbon and fullerene family K$_3$X (X: picene, .. p-terphenyl, .. C$_{60}$). Aromatic hydrocarbon molecules support RVB states. Consequent stability (aromaticity) makes them reluctant electron acceptors. We argue that X accepts only two (not all three) electrons from K$_3$ and creates charged RVB's in X$^{2-}$, and becomes a (molecular) Cooper pair box. A weak Josephson coupling between X$^{2-}$ molecules creates a Bose Mott insulator, a potential high Tc superconductor. Remaining lone electron in the complex (K$_3)^{2+}$ o…
Paired valence electrons forming covalent bonds in molecues are confined cooper pair correlations. High pressure dissociates molecules in solid H2S, SiH4, H2 etc. and form extended structures. However, valence electrons are resilient and continue to bond and sometimes resonate. It is suggested that some structures contain emergent Mott insulators (EMI) and support superconductivity and other phases, under special conditions. In pressurized solid H2S, we propose presence of a sublattice of relatively narrow, nearly half filled band of H atoms, trapped in ordered interstitials of colvalently bon…
Turning a Band Insulator Into an Exotic Superconductor
了解奇异的，非s波的库珀对状态是重要的，并可能导致新的超导体具有更高的临界温度和新的属性。它们的存在被认为是可能的，但一直被认为是与非传统的超导机制有关，在这种机制中，电子相关性起着重要作用。在这里，我们使用的第一原理的线性响应计算表明，在掺杂Bi $_{2}$ Se $_{3}$的一个非常规的p-波-样的状态，可以通过一个传统的声子介导的机制，驱动一个不寻常的，几乎奇异的行为，在长波长的电子-声子相互作用的青睐。这可能为我们理解掺杂带绝缘体中的超导现象提供一个新的平台。
We study the magnon-mediated pairing between fermions on the surface of a topological insulator (TI) coupled to a ferromagnetic insulator with a tilted mean field magnetization. Tilting the magnetization towards the interfacial plane reduces the magnetic band gap and leads to a shift in the effective TI dispersions. We derive and solve the self-consistency equation for the superconducting gap in two different situations, where we neglect or include the frequency dependence of the magnon propagator. Neglecting the frequency dependence results in p-wave Amperean solutions. We also find that tilt…
We consider a finite-size topological Josephson junction formed at the edge of a two-dimensional topological insulator in proximity to conventional superconductors and study the impact of Cooper pair symmetries on the electron transport. We find that, due to the finite junction size, electron transport is highly tunable by the superconducting phase difference $ϕ$ across the junction. At zero frequency and $ϕ=π$, the setup exhibits vanishing local Andreev reflection and perfect normal transmission due to the interplay of finite junction size and formation of topological Andreev bound states in …
Doped band insulators, HfNCl, WO$_3$, diamond, Bi$_2$Se$_3$, \bis2 families, STO/LAO interface, gate doped SrTiO$_3$ and MoS$_2$ etc. are unusual superconductors. With an aim to build a general theory for superconductivity in doped band insulators we focuss on \bis2 family, discovered by Mizuguchi et al. in 2012. While maximum Tc is only $\sim$ 11 K in \laofx, a number of experimental results are puzzling and anomalous; they resemble high Tc and unconventional superconductors. Using a two orbital model of Usui, Suzuki and Kuroki we show that the uniform low density free fermi sea in \laofh is …
Interplay between topological insulators and superconductors
拓扑绝缘体在本体上是绝缘的，但具有受时间反演对称性保护的金属表面态。在这里，我们报告了详细的电子输运研究高品质的Bi 2 Se 3拓扑绝缘体薄膜接触超导（In，Al和W）电极。当电极变为超导时，薄膜的电阻显示出突然的和显著的上升。反过来，Bi2Se3膜强烈削弱了电极的超导性，显著降低了它们的转变温度和临界场。这些结果的一个可能的解释是，超导电极访问的表面状态和实验结果之间的相互作用的结果库珀对的电极和表面状态的自旋极化电流在Bi 2 Se 3。
In two-dimensional (2D) superconductors an insulating state can be induced either by applying a magnetic field, $H$, or by increasing disorder. Many scenarios have been put forth to explain the superconductor to insulator transition (SIT): dominating fermionic physics after the breaking of Cooper pairs, loss of phase coherence between superconducting islands embedded in a metallic or insulating matrix and localization of Cooper pairs with concomitant condensation of vortex-type excitations. The difficulty in characterizing the insulating state and its origin stems from the lack of a continuous…
