1] Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA [2].
Nat Commun. 2013;4:2710. doi: 10.1038/ncomms3710.
Majorana fermions (MFs), quantum particles that are their own antiparticles, are not only of fundamental importance in elementary particle physics and dark matter, but also building blocks for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Recently MFs have been intensively studied in solid state and cold atomic systems. These studies are generally based on superconducting pairing with zero total momentum. On the other hand, finite total momentum Cooper pairings, known as Fulde-Ferrell (FF) Larkin-Ovchinnikov (LO) states, were widely studied in many branches of physics. However, whether FF and LO superconductors can support MFs has not been explored. Here we show that MFs can exist in certain types of gapped FF states, yielding a new quantum matter: topological FF superfluids/superconductors. We demonstrate the existence of such topological FF superfluids and the associated MFs using spin-orbit-coupled degenerate Fermi gases and derive their parameter regions. The implementation of topological FF superconductors in semiconductor/superconductor heterostructures is also discussed.
马约拉纳费米子(MFs)是自身的反粒子,它们不仅在基本粒子物理和暗物质中具有重要意义,而且还是容错量子计算的基石。最近,MFs 在固态和冷原子系统中得到了深入研究。这些研究通常基于具有零总动量的超导配对。另一方面,有限总动量的库珀对,称为富勒-费雷尔(FF)拉金-奥弗恰尼科夫(LO)态,在物理学的许多分支中都得到了广泛研究。然而,FF 和 LO 超导体是否能够支持 MF 尚未得到探索。在这里,我们表明 MF 可以存在于某些类型的带隙 FF 态中,从而产生一种新的量子物质:拓扑 FF 超流/超导体。我们使用自旋轨道耦合简并费米气体证明了这种拓扑 FF 超流的存在及其相关的 MF,并推导出了它们的参数区域。还讨论了在半导体/超导体异质结构中实现拓扑 FF 超导体的问题。