2015/06/30 by Yu Saito, Yasuharu Nakamura, Mohammad Saeed Bahramy +9 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.supr-con #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys3580
published as Nature Physics 12 (2), 144-149 (2016) · 37 pages, 11 figures, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR15/Session/G11.11
arxiv created 2016/06/11 · arxiv updated 2016/06/14
Symmetry-breaking has been known to play a key role in noncentrosymmetric superconductors with strong spin-orbit-interaction (SOI). The studies, however, have been so far mainly focused on a particular type of SOI, known as Rashba SOI, whereby the electron spin is locked to its momentum at a right-angle, thereby leading to an in-planar helical spin texture. Here we discuss electric-field-induced superconductivity in molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), which exhibits a fundamentally different type of intrinsic SOI manifested by an out-of-plane Zeeman-type spin polarization of energy valleys. We find an upper critical field of approximately 52 T at 1.5 K, which indicates an enhancement of the Pauli limit by a factor of four as compared to that in centrosymmetric conventional superconductors. Using realistic tight-binding calculations, we reveal that this unusual behaviour is due to an inter-valley pairing that is symmetrically protected by Zeeman-type spin-valley locking against external magnetic fields. Our study sheds a new light on the interplay of inversion asymmetry with SOI in confined geometries, and its unprecedented role in superconductivity.