Tunable critical field in Rashba superconductor thin films

Strong intrinsic or interfacial spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can enable a thin-film superconductor to exceed the paramagnetic limit. For Rashba-type SOC, we show that superconducting thermodynamic properties of finite-size thin film are strongly sample-size dependent due creation edge states; for example, in case geometrically anisotropic films, critical field is found be tunable through direction an externally applied in-plane magnetic field. These findings open perspectives development spin-orbitronic devices.