2014/05/29 by P. M. R. Brydon, Andreas P. Schnyder, Carsten Timm · 18 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Condensed matter physics #Electron #Pairing #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Quasiparticle #Spin polarization #Superconductivity #Surface (topology) #Surface states #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological insulator #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/17/1/013016
published in New Journal of Physics 17(1), 013016 (IOP Publishing) · 18 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2014/05/29 · openalex publication_date 2015/01/15 · arxiv updated 2015/01/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Surface states of topological noncentrosymmetric superconductors (NCSs) exhibit intricate helical spin textures, i.e., the spin orientation of the surface quasiparticles is coupled to their momentum. Using quasiclassical theory, we study the spin polarization of the surface states as a function of the spin–orbit interaction and superconducting pairing symmetry. We focus on two- and three-dimensional fully gapped and nodal NCSs. For the case of nodal systems, we show that the spin polarization of the topological flat bands is controlled by the spin polarization of the bulk normal states at the bounding gap nodes. We demonstrate that the zero-bias conductance in a magnetic tunnel junction can be used as an experimental test of the surface-state spin polarization.