English

A generic theory for Majorana zero modes in 2D superconductors

Superconductivity 2017-07-31 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

It is well known that non-Abelian Majorana zero modes (MZM) harbor at vortex cores in a px+ipyp_{x}+\text{i}p_{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 ss-wave superconductor. Here we show that existence of non-Abelian MZMs is unrelated to the bulk topology of a 2D superconductor, and propose that such exotic modes can be resulted in much broader range of superconductors, being topological or trivial. For a generic 2D system with multiple Fermi surfaces and gapped out by superconducting pairings, we show that at least a single MZM survives if there are only odd number of Fermi surfaces of which the corresponding superconducting orders have vortices, and such MZM is protected by an emergent Chern-Simons invariant, irrespective of the bulk topology of the superconductor. This result may enrich new experimental schemes for realizing non-Aelian 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 the recent cold atom experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.03396,
  title  = {A generic theory for Majorana zero modes in 2D superconductors},
  author = {Cheung Chan and Lin Zhang and Ting Fung Jeffrey Poon and Ying-Ping He and Yan-Qi Wang and Xiong-Jun Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03396},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures, plus Supplementary Material

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:41:29.496Z