Abstract
We predict that junctions between an antiferromagnetic insulator and a superconductor provide a robust platform to create a one-dimensional topological superconducting state. Its emergence does not require the presence of intrinsic spin-orbit coupling nor non-collinear magnetism, but arises solely from repulsive electronic interactions on interfacial solitonic states. We demonstrate that a topological superconducting state is generated by repulsive interactions at arbitrarily small coupling strength, and that the size of the topological gap rapidly saturates to the one of the parent trivial superconductor. Our results put forward antiferromagnetic insulators as a new platform for interaction-driven topological superconductivity.
Highlights
The search for topological superconductors has been one of the most active areas in condensed matter physics in recent years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]
We demonstrate that the robustness of this unique state stems from the solitonic nature of the emergent excitations at the interface, in which interaction-induced gap opening unavoidably gives rise to a topological superconducting state
It is shown that in the absence of interactions, the sectors Sz = ±1/2 are fully decoupled, stemming from the U (1)-spin symmetry of the Hamiltonian. With this lattice model we explore the impact of electronic interactions by solving self-consistently Eq (1)
Summary
The search for topological superconductors has been one of the most active areas in condensed matter physics in recent years [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. We demonstrate that the robustness of this unique state stems from the solitonic nature of the emergent excitations at the interface, in which interaction-induced gap opening unavoidably gives rise to a topological superconducting state. Our results put forward antiferromagnet-superconductor junctions as a robust platform to engineer interaction-induced topological superconductivity.
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