Creation of Spin-Triplet Cooper Pairs in the Absence of Magnetic Ordering

In superconducting spintronics, it is essential to generate spin-Triplet Cooper pairs on demand. Up to now, proposals to do so concentrate on hybrid structures in which a superconductor (SC) is combined with a magnetically ordered material (or an external magnetic field). We, instead, identify a novel way to create and isolate spin-Triplet Cooper pairs in the absence of any magnetic ordering. This achievement is only possible because we drive a system with strong spin-orbit interaction-the Dirac surface states of a strong topological insulator (TI)-out of equilibrium. In particular, we consider a bipolar TI-SC-TI junction, where the electrochemical potentials in the outer leads differ in their overall sign. As a result, we find that nonlocal singlet pairing across the junction is completely suppressed for any excitation energy. Hence, this junction acts as a perfect spin-Triplet filter across the SC, generating equal-spin Cooper pairs via crossed Andreev reflection.