Magnetic impurities at surfaces of superconductors can induce bound states referred to as Yu–Shiba–Rusinov states (i.e. Shiba states) within superconducting (SC) gaps. For superconductors with strong spin–orbit coupling (SOC), Shiba states arising from even single magnetic adatoms are too complex to be fully understood using effective models alone because SOC cannot be treated perturbatively and multiple orbitals are strongly mixed with spin projections. Here we investigate Shiba states of single magnetic adatoms at the surface of strongly spin-orbit coupled SC Pb, by solving the fully relativistic Dirac–Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations using multiple scattering Green’s function methods. For Fe and Co adatoms on Pb(110), we show that the Shiba states are better characterized by total angular momentum,
Following the discovery of topological insulators, there has been a renewed interest in superconducting systems that have strong spin-orbit (SO) coupling. Here we address the fundamental question of how the spin properties of a otherwise spin-singlet superconducting ground state evolve with increasing SO impurity density. We have mapped out the Zeeman critical field phase diagram of superconducting Al films that were deposited over random Pb cluster arrays of varying density. These phase diagrams give a direct measure of the Fermi liquid spin renormalization, as well as the spin orbit scattering rate. We find that the spin renormalization is a linear function of the average Pb cluster -to- cluster separation and that this dependency can be used to tune the spin susceptibility of the Al over a surprisingly wide range from 0.8χ0to 4.0χ0, where
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10154111
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communications Physics
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2399-3650
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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