Journal
NATURE PHYSICS
Volume 12, Issue 2, Pages 144-+Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS3580
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Funding
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- JSPS [25000003]
- MEXT of Japan [22103004]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [15J07681, 26105004, 25000003, 15K05143, 15H05745, 15H05884, 14J04333, 15K05164, 24740230, 22103004] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Symmetry-breaking has been known to play a key role in non-centrosymmetric superconductors with strong spin-orbit interactions (SOIs; refs 1-6). The studies, however, have been so far mainly focused on a particular type of SOI, known as the Rashba SOI (ref. 7), whereby the electron spin is locked to its momentum at a right-angle, thereby leading to an in-plane helical spin texture. Here we discuss electric-field-induced superconductivity in molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), which exhibits a fundamentally different type of intrinsic SOI, manifested by an out-of-plane Zeeman-type spin polarization of energy valleys(8-10). We find an upper critical field of approximately 52 T at 1.5 K, which indicates an enhancement of the Pauli limit by a factor of four as compared to that in centrosymmetric conventional superconductors. Using realistic tight-binding calculations, we reveal that this unusual behaviour is due to an inter-valley pairing that is symmetrically protected by Zeeman-type spin-valley locking against external magnetic fields. Our study sheds light on the interplay of inversion asymmetry with SOIs in confined geometries, and its role in superconductivity.
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