Intrinsic chiral topological superconductor thin films

Abstract

Superconductors (SCs) with nontrivial topological band structures in the normal state have been discovered recently in bulk materials. When such SCs are made into thin films, quantum tunneling and Cooper pairing take place between the topological surface states (TSSs) on the opposing surfaces. Here, we find that chiral topological superconductivity with spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking emerges on the surface of such thin film SCs. There is a mirror symmetry that protects a novel nonunitary orbital and spin triplet pairing of the TSS. In the mirror diagonal space, the chiral topological SC manifests as two independent chiral p-wave spin-triplet pairing states, in which each is a two-dimensional superconducting analog of the Anderson-Brinkman-Morel state in superfluid He3 with in-plane exchange fields. A rich topological phase diagram governed by the nontrivial Z⊕Z topological invariant is obtained with gapless chiral Majorana edge modes and anyonic Majorana vortices. We further construct a three-dimensional lattice model with a topological band structure and SC pairings, which is motivated by Fe-based SCs such as Fe(Te,Se). We demonstrate the realization of the proposed intrinsic chiral topological superconductor in the quasi-two-dimensional thin-film limit. Our findings enable thin-film SCs with nontrivial Z2 band structures as a single-material platform for intrinsic chiral topological superconductivity with both vortex and boundary Majorana excitations for topological quantum device making.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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