Zeeman-field-induced topological phase transitions in triplet superconductors

We develop a general Ginzburg-Landau theory that describes the effect of a Zeeman field on the superconducting order parameter in two-dimensional triplet superconductors. Starting from Ginzburg-Landau theories that describe fully gapped time-reversal symmetric triplet superconductors, we show that t...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2014-08, Vol.90 (6), Article 064507
Hauptverfasser: Hyart, Timo, Wright, Anthony R., Rosenow, Bernd
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:We develop a general Ginzburg-Landau theory that describes the effect of a Zeeman field on the superconducting order parameter in two-dimensional triplet superconductors. Starting from Ginzburg-Landau theories that describe fully gapped time-reversal symmetric triplet superconductors, we show that the Zeeman field has dramatic effects on the topological properties of the superconductors. In particular, in the vicinity of a critical chemical potential separating two topologically distinct phases, it is possible to induce a phase transition to a topologically nontrivial phase which supports chiral edge modes. Moreover, for specific directions of the Zeeman field, we obtain nodal superconducting phases with an emerging chiral symmetry, and with Majorana flat bands at the edge. The Ginzburg-Landau theory is microscopically supported by a self-consistent mean-field theory of the doped Kitaev-Heisenberg model.
ISSN:1098-0121
1550-235X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.90.064507