(De)confinement of supercurrent in Z2 Topological Insulators
Abstract
It is shown that the electric supercurrent flows in a Z2 topological insulator with Uem(1) X Uz(1) (electromagnetic and spin) gauge symmetries. When Uz(1) is broken, a dissipationless electric current is still possible to flow locally but net charge transfer is absent, i.e., current is confined. In the Kane-Mele model for graphene, this confining-deconfining (superconducting) transition is driven by the Rashba spin-orbit interaction, which breaks Uz(1).
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