2025/04/02 by Tom G. Saunderson, Martin Gradhand, Saunderson, Tom G. +15
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Iron-based superconductors research #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.01271
openalex publication_date 2025/04/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is often assumed that in a superconductor without spin-triplet pairing, the formation of unconventional spin-triplet densities requires the spin-orbit interaction in combination with either broken inversion symmetry or broken time-reversal symmetry. Here, we show from first principles the existence of supercurrent-driven spin triplet densities on the surface of a variety of simple superconducting materials without spin-orbit coupling. We are able to attribute this phenomenon to the superconducting non-relativistic orbital Rashba Edelstein effect. Furthermore, we find that the spin-orbit induced spin moment is one order of magnitude smaller than the orbital moment, and has a vanishing effect on the total magnitude of the induced triplet density. Our findings imply the existence of a route to generate spin-currents without the use of heavy metals. Additionally, as an orbital moment can couple directly to a magnetic field, it shows that orbital physics is the dominant term that drives the superconducting diode effect.