Concurrent Ferromagnetism and Superconductivity in Fe(Te,Se) van der Waals Josephson Junctions

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity in Fe(Te,Se) van der Waals Josephson junctions through transport measurements, revealing potential for topological quantum computing applications.

Contribution

It provides the first transport evidence of time-reversal symmetry breaking and ferromagnetism in Fe(Te,Se) vdW Josephson devices, highlighting new avenues for topological superconductor research.

Findings

Observation of magnetic hysteresis below Tc

Detection of 0-π phase mixing in Fraunhofer patterns

Superconducting diode effect indicating time-reversal symmetry breaking

Abstract

Ferromagnetism and superconductivity are two key ingredients to create non-Abelian quasiparticle excitations that are expected as building blocks to construct topological quantum computers. Adversely, ferromagnetism and superconductivity are typically also two hostile orderings competing to align spins in different configurations, making the material design and experimental implementation extremely challenging. Recently, iron-based superconductor Fe(Te,Se) has emerged as a connate topological superconductor (TSC), which differentiates itself from other hybrid TSCs by self-proximitizing its Dirac surface states with bulk superconductivity. So far, the efforts to search for Majorana states in this material are prevalently focused on spectroscopy techniques. In this paper, we present the global transport signature of interfacial magnetism coexisting with superconductivity. Time-reversal symmetry breaking superconducting states are confirmed through device level transport measurements for the first time in a van der Waals (vdW) Josephson junction structure. Magnetic hysteresis is observed in this device scheme, which only appears below the superconducting critical temperature, leading to potential Fulde-Ferrell (FF) superconducting pairing mechanisms. The 0-{\pi} phase mixing in the Fraunhofer patterns pinpoints the ferromagnetic state dwelling on the surface. Furthermore, a stochastic field-free superconducting diode effect also confirms the spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking which reflects the behavior of the ferromagnetism. Our work paves a new way to explore topological superconductivity in iron-based superconductors for future high Tc fault-tolerant qubit implementations from a device perspective.