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Events on Friday, January 15th, 2016

R. G. Herb Condensed Matter Seminar
Superconducting proximity effect in topological and spin-orbit materials
Time: 10:00 am
Place: 5310 Chamberlin Hall
Speaker: Christopher Reeg, University of Florida
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the proximity effect due to its role in the realization of topological superconductivity. During this talk, we discuss several results that have been obtained in the field of proximity-induced superconductivity and relate the results to the search for Majorana fermions. First, we show that repulsive electron-electron interactions can induce a non-Majorana zero-energy bound state at the interface between a conventional superconductor and a normal metal and propose an experimental setup to observe such a state. Next, we discuss how the size of the gap that is induced in a finite-sized normal metal proximity-coupled with a conventional superconductor evolves as the thickness of the metal is increased. This question has important experimental consequences in topological superconductivity, as a sizable gap is required to isolate and detect the Majorana modes. Finally, we show that strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling, which is one of the key ingredients in engineering a topological superconductor, induces triplet pairing in the proximity effect.
Host: Levchenko
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