TY - JOUR A1 - Scharf, Benedikt A1 - Braggio, Alessandro A1 - Stambini, Elia A1 - Giazotto, Francesco A1 - Hankiewicz, Ewelina M. T1 - Topological Josephson heat engine JF - Communications Physics N2 - Topological superconductors represent a fruitful playing ground for fundamental research as well as for potential applications in fault-tolerant quantum computing. Especially Josephson junctions based on topological superconductors remain intensely studied, both theoretically and experimentally. The characteristic property of these junctions is their 4-periodic ground-state fermion parity in the superconducting phase difference. Using such topological Josephson junctions, we introduce the concept of a topological Josephson heat engine. We discuss how this engine can be implemented as a Josephson-Stirling cycle in topological superconductors, thereby illustrating the potential of the intriguing and fruitful marriage between topology and coherent thermodynamics. It is shown that the Josephson-Stirling cycle constitutes a highly versatile thermodynamic machine with different modes of operation controlled by the cycle temperatures. Finally, the thermodynamic cycle reflects the hallmark 4 pi -periodicity of topological Josephson junctions and could therefore be envisioned as a complementary approach to test topological superconductivity. Topological superconductors are expected to be a key component of quantum computing systems but reliably detecting their exotic properties is a challenge. Here, the authors propose a topological Josephson heat engine which uses thermodynamic effects to probe the 4 pi -periodic ground state of a topological superconductor. KW - superconductivity Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-230603 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elster, Lars A1 - Platt, Christian A1 - Thomale, Ronny A1 - Hanke, Werner A1 - Hankiewicz, Ewelina M. T1 - Accessing topological superconductivity via a combined STM and renormalization group analysis JF - Nature Communications N2 - The search for topological superconductors has recently become a key issue in condensed matter physics, because of their possible relevance to provide a platform for Majorana bound states, non-Abelian statistics, and quantum computing. Here we propose a new scheme which links as directly as possible the experimental search to a material-based microscopic theory for topological superconductivity. For this, the analysis of scanning tunnelling microscopy, which typically uses a phenomenological ansatz for the superconductor gap functions, is elevated to a theory, where a multi-orbital functional renormalization group analysis allows for an unbiased microscopic determination of the material-dependent pairing potentials. The combined approach is highlighted for paradigmatic hexagonal systems, such as doped graphene and water-intercalated sodium cobaltates, where lattice symmetry and electronic correlations yield a propensity for a chiral singlet topological superconductor. We demonstrate that our microscopic material-oriented procedure is necessary to uniquely resolve a topological superconductor state. KW - tunneling spectroscopy KW - Sr\(_2\)RuO\(_4\) KW - states KW - transition KW - insulators KW - surface KW - Majorana fermions KW - unconventional superconductivity KW - wave superconductors Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148181 VL - 6 IS - 8232 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brüne, Christoph A1 - Thienel, Cornelius A1 - Stuiber, Michael A1 - Böttcher, Jan A1 - Buhmann, Hartmut A1 - Novik, Elena G. A1 - Liu, Chao-Xing A1 - Hankiewicz, Ewelina M. A1 - Molenkamp, Laurens W. T1 - Dirac-Screening Stabilized Surface-State Transport in a Topological Insulator JF - Physical Review X N2 - We report magnetotransport studies on a gated strained HgTe device. This material is a three-dimensional topological insulator and exclusively shows surface-state transport. Remarkably, the Landau-level dispersion and the accuracy of the Hall quantization remain unchanged over a wide density range (3×1011  cm−2