Correlation of Magnetism and Disordered Shiba Bands in Fe Monolayer Islands on Nb(110)

TL;DR

This study explores how disorder and magnetism in Fe monolayer islands on Nb(110) influence the formation of Shiba bands and topological superconductivity, revealing that reconstruction-induced disorder hampers topological states.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that reconstructed growth modes induce disorder detrimental to 2D topological superconductivity in magnetic-superconductor hybrid systems.

Findings

All Fe islands are ferromagnetic with different coercive fields.

Shiba bands overlap with the Fermi energy, filling the superconducting gap.

No signs of topological gaps or edge modes were observed.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) magnet-superconductor hybrid systems are intensively studied due to their potential for the realization of 2D topological superconductors with Majorana edge modes. It is theoretically predicted that this quantum state is ubiquitous in spin-orbit coupled ferromagnetic or skyrmionic 2D spin-lattices in proximity to an s-wave superconductor. However, recent examples suggest that the requirements for topological superconductivity are complicated by the multi-orbital nature of the magnetic components and disorder effects. Here, we investigate Fe monolayer islands grown on a surface of the s-wave superconductor with the largest gap of all elemental superconductors, Nb, with respect to magnetism and superconductivity using spin-resolved scanning tunneling spectrosopy. We find three types of Fe monolayer islands which differ by their reconstruction inducing disorder, the magnetism and the sub-gap electronic states. All three types are ferromagnetic with different coercive fields indicating diverse exchange and anisotropy energies. On all three islands, there is finite spectral weight throughout the substrate's energy gap at the expense of the coherence peak intensity, indicating the formation of Shiba bands overlapping with the Fermi energy. The gap filling and coherence peak reduction is strongest for the island with largest coercive field. A strong lateral variation of the spectral weight of the Shiba bands signifies substantial disorder on the order of the substrate's pairing energy with a length scale of the period of the three different reconstructions. There are neither signs of topological gaps within these bands nor of any kind of edge modes. Our work illustrates that a reconstructed growth mode of magnetic layers on superconducting surfaces is detrimental for the formation of 2D topological superconductivity.