Effects of interface spin-orbit coupling on tunneling between normal metal and chiral p-wave superconductor

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interface Rashba spin-orbit coupling affects tunneling conductance in normal metal/chiral p-wave superconductor junctions, revealing shifts in conductance peaks and effects of Fermi wavevector mismatch.

Contribution

It introduces an extended BTK formalism to analyze the impact of interface spin-orbit coupling on tunneling spectra in chiral p-wave superconductors.

Findings

Subgap conductance peaks shift to nonzero bias due to Rashba spin-orbit coupling.

Fermi wavevector mismatch influences tunneling conductance.

Interface effects modify surface bound state signatures.

Abstract

We study the tunneling conductance of a clean normal metal/chiral p-wave superconductor junction using the extended Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk formalism. It is shown that the spin-orbit coupling of the Rashba type that is present near the interface causes the subgap conductance peaks associated with the Andreev surface bound states to shift to a nonzero bias. We also investigate the effect of the Fermi wavevector mismatch between the normal metal and the superconductor.