Chiral and counter-propagating Majorana fermions in a p-wave superconductor

被引：6

作者：

Hu, Haiping ^{[1
,2
]}

Satija, Indubala I. ^{[1
]}

Zhao, Erhai ^{[1
,3
]}

机构：

[1] George Mason Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, Fairfax, VA 22030 USA

[2] Univ Pittsburgh, Dept Phys & Astron, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA

[3] George Mason Univ, Quantum Mat Ctr, Fairfax, VA 22030 USA

来源：

NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS | 2019年 / 21卷 / 12期

关键词：

topological superconductor; Majorana edge mode; braiding; QUANTIZED HALL CONDUCTANCE; NON-ABELIAN STATISTICS; QUANTUM; STATES;

D O I：

10.1088/1367-2630/ab5cad

中图分类号：

O4 [物理学];

学科分类号：

0702 ;

摘要：

Chiral and helical Majorana fermions are two archetypal edge excitations in two-dimensional topological superconductors. They emerge from systems of different Altland-Zirnbauer symmetries and characterized by Z and Z(2) topological invariants respectively. It seems improbable to tune a pair of co-propagating chiral edge modes to counter-propagate in a single system without symmetry breaking. Here, we explore the peculiar behaviors of Majorana edge modes in topological superconductors with an additional 'mirror' symmetry which changes the bulk topological invariant to Z circle plus Z type. A theoretical toy model describing the proximity structure of a Chern insulator and a p(x)-wave superconductor is proposed and solved analytically to illustrate a direct transition between two topologically nontrivial phases. The weak pairing phase has two chiral Majorana edge modes, while the strong pairing phase is characterized by mirror-graded Chern number and hosts a pair of counter-propagating Majorana fermions protected by the mirror symmetry. The edge theory is worked out in detail, and implications to braiding of Majorana fermions are discussed.

引用

页数：7

共 54 条

[1] Milestones Toward Majorana-Based Quantum Computing [J].

Aasen, David ;

Hell, Michael ;

Mishmash, Ryan V. ;

Higginbotham, Andrew ;

Danon, Jeroen ;

Leijnse, Martin ;

Jespersen, Thomas S. ;

Folk, Joshua A. ;

Marcus, Charles M. ;

Flensberg, Karsten ;

Alicea, Jason .

PHYSICAL REVIEW X, 2016, 6 (03)

[2] New directions in the pursuit of Majorana fermions in solid state systems [J].

Alicea, Jason .

REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN PHYSICS, 2012, 75 (07)

[3] Non-Abelian statistics and topological quantum information processing in 1D wire networks [J].

Alicea, Jason ;

Oreg, Yuval ;

Refael, Gil ;

von Oppen, Felix ;

Fisher, Matthew P. A. .

NATURE PHYSICS, 2011, 7 (05) :412-417

[4] Observation of half-integer thermal Hall conductance [J].

Banerjee, Mitali ;

Heiblum, Moty ;

Umansky, Vladimir ;

Feldman, Dima E. ;

Oreg, Yuval ;

Stern, Ady .

NATURE, 2018, 559 (7713) :205-+

[5] Quantum spin Hall effect and topological phase transition in HgTe quantum wells [J].

Bernevig, B. Andrei ;

Hughes, Taylor L. ;

Zhang, Shou-Cheng .

SCIENCE, 2006, 314 (5806) :1757-1761

[6] Majorana modes and p-wave superfluids for fermionic atoms in optical lattices [J].

Buehler, A. ;

Lang, N. ;

Kraus, C. V. ;

Moeller, G. ;

Huber, S. D. ;

Buechler, H. P. .

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 2014, 5

[7] Long-Lived Spin-Orbit-Coupled Degenerate Dipolar Fermi Gas [J].

Burdick, Nathaniel Q. ;

Tang, Yijun ;

Lev, Benjamin L. .

PHYSICAL REVIEW X, 2016, 6 (03)

[8] Classification of topological quantum matter with symmetries [J].

Chiu, Ching-Kai ;

Teo, Jeffrey C. Y. ;

Schnyder, Andreas P. ;

Ryu, Shinsei .

REVIEWS OF MODERN PHYSICS, 2016, 88 (03)

[9] Majorana Modes in Time-Reversal Invariant s-Wave Topological Superconductors [J].

Deng, Shusa ;

Viola, Lorenza ;

Ortiz, Gerardo .

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 2012, 108 (03)

[10] p-wave Cooper pairing of fermions in mixtures of dilute Fermi and Bose gases -: art. no. 134519 [J].

Efremov, DV ;

Viverit, L .

PHYSICAL REVIEW B, 2002, 65 (13) :1-4

← 1 2 3 4 5 6 →