We show that the coupling of homogeneous Heisenberg spin-1/2 ladders in different phases leads to the formation of interfacial zero energy Majorana bound states. Unlike Majorana bound states at the interfaces of topological quantum wires, these states are void of topological protection and generally susceptible to local perturbations of the host spin system. However, a key message of our work is that in practice they show a high degree of resilience over wide parameter ranges which may make them interesting candidates for applications.
@article{arxiv.1806.01925,
title = {Non-Topological Majorana Zero Modes in Inhomogeneous Spin Ladders},
author = {Neil J. Robinson and Alexander Altland and Reinhold Egger and Niklas M. Gergs and Wei Li and Dirk Schuricht and Alexei M. Tsvelik and Andreas Weichselbaum and Robert M. Konik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.01925},
year = {2019}
}