Reentrant superconductivity in proximity to a topological insulator

Abstract

Superconducting hybrid structures with topological order and induced magnetization offer a promising way to realize fault-tolerant quantum computation. However, the effect of the interplay between magnetization and the property of the topological insulator surface, otherwise known as spin-momentum locking on the superconducting proximity effect, still remains to be investigated. We relied on the quasiclassical self-consistent approach to consider the superconducting transition temperature in the two-dimensional superconductor/topological insulator (S/TI) junction with an in-plane helical magnetization on the TI surface. It has emerged that the presence of the helical magnetization leads to the nonmonotonic dependence of the critical temperature on the TI thickness for both cases when the magnetization evolves along or perpendicular to the interface. The results obtained can be helpful for designing novel superconducting nanodevices and better understanding the nature of superconductivity in S/TI systems with nonuniform magnetization.