Superconducting proximity effect in silicene: Spin-valley-polarized Andreev reflection, nonlocal transport, and supercurrent

Abstract

We theoretically study the superconducting proximity effect in silicene, which features massive Dirac fermions with a tunable mass (band gap), and compute the conductance across a normal-superconductor (N-S) silicene junction, the nonlocal conductance of an N-S-N junction, and the supercurrent flowing in an S-N-S junction. It is demonstrated that the transport processes consisting of local and nonlocal Andreev reflection may be efficiently controlled via an external electric field owing to the buckled structure of silicene. In particular, we demonstrate that it is possible to obtain a fully spin-valley-polarized crossed Andreev reflection process without any contamination of elastic cotunneling or local Andreev reflection, in stark contrast to ordinary metals. It is also shown that the supercurrent flowing in the S-N-S junction can be fully spin-valley polarized and that it is controllable by an external electric field.