Itahashi Yuki M, Ideue Toshiya, Saito Yu, Shimizu Sunao, Ouchi Takumi, Nojima Tsutomu, Iwasa Yoshihiro
Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC) and Department of Applied Physics, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
California NanoSystems Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA 93106, USA.
Sci Adv. 2020 Mar 27;6(13):eaay9120. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9120. eCollection 2020 Mar.
Polar conductors/superconductors with Rashba-type spin-orbit interaction are potential material platforms for quantum transport and spintronic functionalities. One of their inherent properties is the nonreciprocal transport, where the rightward and leftward currents become inequivalent, reflecting spatial inversion/time-reversal symmetry breaking. Such a rectification effect originating from the polar symmetry has been recently observed at interfaces or bulk Rashba semiconductors, while its mechanism in a polar superconductor remains elusive. Here, we report the nonreciprocal transport in gate-induced two-dimensional superconductor SrTiO, which is a Rashba superconductor candidate. In addition to the gigantic enhancement of nonreciprocal signals in the superconducting fluctuation region, we found kink and sharp peak structures around critical temperatures, which reflect the crossover behavior from the paraconductivity origin to the vortex origin, based on a microscopic theory. The present result proves that the nonreciprocal transport is a powerful tool for investigating the interfacial/polar superconductors without inversion symmetry, where rich exotic features are theoretically prognosticated.
具有Rashba型自旋轨道相互作用的极性导体/超导体是实现量子输运和自旋电子功能的潜在材料平台。它们的固有特性之一是非互易输运,即向右和向左的电流变得不等价,这反映了空间反演/时间反演对称性的破缺。这种源于极性对称性的整流效应最近在界面或体Rashba半导体中被观察到,但其在极性超导体中的机制仍然难以捉摸。在这里,我们报道了栅极诱导的二维超导体SrTiO中的非互易输运,它是一种Rashba超导体候选材料。除了在超导涨落区域非互易信号的巨大增强外,我们还基于微观理论在临界温度附近发现了扭折和尖锐峰结构,这反映了从顺磁导电性起源到涡旋起源的交叉行为。目前的结果证明,非互易输运是研究没有反演对称性的界面/极性超导体的有力工具,理论上预测在这类超导体中存在丰富的奇异特性。