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Bulk superconductivity in the Dirac semimetal TlSb

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Abstract

A feasible strategy for realizing the Majorana fermions is searching for a simple compound with both bulk superconductivity and Dirac surface states. In this paper, we perform calculations of electronic band structure, the Fermi surface, and the surface states, and measure the resistivity, magnetization, and specific heat of a TlSb compound with a CsCl-type structure. The band structure calculations show that TlSb is a Dirac semimetal when spin-orbit coupling is considered. TlSb is first determined to be a type-II superconductor with Tc=4.38 K, Hc1(0) = 148 Oe, Hc2(0)=1.12 T, and κGL = 10.6. We also confirm that TlSb is a moderately coupled s-wave superconductor. Although we cannot determine the band near the Fermi level EF that is responsible for superconductivity, its coexistence with topological surface states implies that the TlSb compound may be a simple material platform to realize the fault-tolerant quantum computations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    YuXing Zhou, ZheFeng Lou, HuanCheng Chen, Qin Chen, BinJie Xu, ChunXiang Wu & MingHu Fang

  2. New Energy Technology Engineering Laboratory of Jiangsu Province, School of Science, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Bin Li

  3. Department of Applied Physics, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    JianHua Du

  4. Department of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 310036, China

    JinHu Yang & HangDong Wang

  5. Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    MingHu Fang

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  1. YuXing Zhou
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Correspondence to MingHu Fang.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0300402), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12074335, and 11974095), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and an open program from the National Lab of Solid-State Microstructures of Nanjing University (Grant No. M32025).

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Zhou, Y., Li, B., Lou, Z. et al. Bulk superconductivity in the Dirac semimetal TlSb. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 64, 247411 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-020-1653-x

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