English

Gate-Defined Topological Josephson Junctions in Bernal Bilayer Graphene

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2023-12-14 v3 Materials Science Strongly Correlated Electrons Superconductivity

Abstract

Recent experiments on Bernal bilayer graphene (BLG) deposited on monolayer WSe2_2 revealed robust, ultra-clean superconductivity coexisting with sizable induced spin-orbit coupling. Here we propose BLG/WSe2_2 as a platform to engineer gate-defined planar topological Josephson junctions, where the normal and superconducting regions descend from a common material. More precisely, we show that if superconductivity in BLG/WSe2_2 is gapped and emerges from a parent state with inter-valley coherence, then Majorana zero modes can form in the barrier region upon applying weak in-plane magnetic fields. Our results spotlight a potential pathway for `internally engineered' topological superconductivity that minimizes detrimental disorder and orbital-magnetic-field effects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.11807,
  title  = {Gate-Defined Topological Josephson Junctions in Bernal Bilayer Graphene},
  author = {Ying-Ming Xie and Étienne Lantagne-Hurtubise and Andrea F. Young and Stevan Nadj-Perge and Jason Alicea},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.11807},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures, plus supplementary material

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:15:17.142Z