Department of Physics and Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA.
Science. 2022 Sep 9;377(6611):1218-1222. doi: 10.1126/science.abj8765. Epub 2022 Sep 8.
Incorporating relativistic physics into quantum tunneling can lead to exotic behavior such as perfect transmission through Klein tunneling. Here, we probed the tunneling properties of spin-momentum-locked relativistic fermions by designing and implementing a tunneling geometry that uses nanowires of the topological Kondo insulator candidate samarium hexaboride. The nanowires are attached to the end of scanning tunneling microscope tips and used to image the bicollinear stripe spin order in the antiferromagnet FeTe with a Neel temperature of about 50 kelvin. The antiferromagnetic stripes become invisible above 10 kelvin concomitant with the suppression of the topological surface states in the tip. We further demonstrate that the direction of spin polarization is tied to the tunneling direction. Our technique establishes samarium hexaboride nanowires as ideal conduits for spin-polarized currents.
将相对论物理纳入量子隧穿中会导致奇异的行为，例如通过克莱因隧穿实现完美传输。在这里，我们通过设计和实施一种使用拓扑近藤绝缘体候选物六硼化钐纳米线的隧穿几何结构来探测自旋-动量锁定相对论费米子的隧穿性质。纳米线连接到扫描隧道显微镜尖端的末端，并用于以约 50 开尔文的尼尔温度成像反铁磁体 FeTe 中的双共线条纹自旋序。反铁磁条纹在 10 开尔文以上变得不可见，伴随着尖端中拓扑表面状态的抑制。我们进一步证明，自旋极化的方向与隧穿方向有关。我们的技术将六硼化钐纳米线确立为自旋极化电流的理想通道。
