Atomic-scale tailoring of spin susceptibility via non-magnetic spin-orbit impurities

Abstract

Following the discovery of topological insulators, there has been a renewed interest in superconducting systems that have strong spin-orbit (SO) coupling. Here we address the fundamental question of how the spin properties of a otherwise spin-singlet superconducting ground state evolve with increasing SO impurity density. We have mapped out the Zeeman critical field phase diagram of superconducting Al films that were deposited over random Pb cluster arrays of varying density. These phase diagrams give a direct measure of the Fermi liquid spin renormalization, as well as the spin orbit scattering rate. We find that the spin renormalization is a linear function of the average Pb cluster-to-cluster separation and that this dependency can be used to tune the spin susceptibility of the Al over a surprisingly wide range from 0.8$\chi_0$ to 4.0$\chi_0$, where $\chi_0$ is the non-interacting Pauli susceptibility.