Superconducting proximity in three dimensional Dirac materials: odd-frequency, pseudoscalar, pseudovector and tensor-valued superconducting orders

TL;DR

This paper investigates the types of superconducting orders induced in three-dimensional Dirac materials when in proximity to a conventional superconductor, revealing the dominance of odd-frequency, spin-triplet, and tensor orders, and predicting Majorana fermions at p-n junctions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the induced superconducting orders in 3D Dirac materials, including the identification of odd-frequency and tensor orders, and predicts Majorana fermions at p-n junctions.

Findings

Induces only s and p-wave pairing in 3DDM from conventional superconductor.

Identifies odd-frequency, spin-triplet, pseudo-vector, and tensor superconducting orders.

Predicts Majorana fermions at transverse p-n junctions in gapless 3DDM.

Abstract

We find that a conventional s-wave superconductor in proximity to three dimensional Dirac material (3DDM), to all orders of perturbation in tunneling, induces a combination of s and p-wave pairing only. We show that the Lorentz invariance of the superconducting pairing prevents the formation of Cooper pairs with higher orbital angular momenta in the 3DDM. This no-go theorem acquires stronger form when the probability of tunneling from the conventional superconductor to positive and negative energy states of 3DDM are equal. In this case all the p-wave contribution except for the lowest order, identically vanish and hence we obtain an exact result for the induced p-wave superconductivity in 3DDM. Fierz decomposing the superconducting matrix we find that temporal component of the vector superconducting order and spatial components of the pseudo-vector order are odd-frequency pairing. We find that the latter is odd with respect to exchange of position and chirality of the electrons in the Cooper pair and is spin-triplet which is necessary for NMR detection of such an exotic pseudo- vector pairing. Moreover, we show that the tensorial order breaks into a polar vector and an axial vector and both of them are conventional pairing except for being spin-triplet. According to our study, for gapless 3DDM the tensorial superconducting order will be the only order which is odd with respect to the chemical potential {\mu}. Therefore we predict that a transverse p-n junction binds Majorana fermions. This effect can be used to control the neutral Majorana fermions with electric fields.