Chan Cheung, Zhang Lin, Poon Ting Fung Jeffrey, He Ying-Ping, Wang Yan-Qi, Liu Xiong-Jun
International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China.
Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Jul 28;119(4):047001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.047001. Epub 2017 Jul 27.
It is well known that non-Abelian Majorana zero modes (MZM) are located at vortex cores in a p_{x}+𝒾p_{y} topological superconductor, which can be realized in a 2D spin-orbit coupled system with a single Fermi surface and by proximity coupling to an s-wave superconductor. Here we show that the existence of non-Abelian MZMs is unrelated to the bulk topology of a 2D superconductor, and propose that such exotic modes can result in a much broader range of superconductors, being topological or trivial. For a generic 2D system with multiple Fermi surfaces that is gapped out by superconducting pairings, we show that at least a single MZM survives if there are only an odd number of Fermi surfaces of which the corresponding superconducting orders have vortices; such a MZM is protected by an emergent Chern-Simons invariant, irrespective of the bulk topology of the superconductor. This result enriches new experimental schemes for realizing non-Abelian MZMs. In particular, we propose a minimal scheme to realize the MZMs in a 2D superconducting Dirac semimetal with trivial bulk topology, which can be well achieved based on recent cold-atom experiments.
众所周知,非阿贝尔马约拉纳零模(MZM)位于(p_{x}+𝒾p_{y})拓扑超导体的涡旋核心处,这可以在具有单个费米面的二维自旋轨道耦合系统中通过与(s)波超导体的近邻耦合来实现。在此我们表明,非阿贝尔MZM的存在与二维超导体的体拓扑无关,并提出这种奇异模式可以存在于更广泛的超导体中,无论是拓扑超导体还是平凡超导体。对于一个由超导配对形成能隙的具有多个费米面的一般二维系统,我们表明,如果只有奇数个费米面且相应的超导序具有涡旋,那么至少会有一个MZM存活下来;这样的MZM由一个涌现的陈 - 西蒙斯不变量保护,与超导体的体拓扑无关。这一结果丰富了实现非阿贝尔MZM的新实验方案。特别是,我们提出了一个在具有平凡体拓扑的二维超导狄拉克半金属中实现MZM的最小方案,基于最近的冷原子实验能够很好地实现。