English

STM as a single Majorana detector of Kitaev's chiral spin liquid

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2021-03-26 v1

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a local detection scheme for the Majorana zero mode (MZM) carried by a vison in Kitaev's chiral spin liquid (CSL) using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The STM introduces a single Majorana into the system through hole/charge injection and the Majorana interacts with the MZM to form a stable composite object. We derive the exact analytical expression of single-hole Green's function in the Mott insulating limit of Kitaev's model and show that the differential conductance has split peaks, as a consequence of resonant tunneling through the vison-hole composite. The peak splitting scales with the binding energy of vison-hole composite, which is comparable to the Majorana gap in CSL, well within the reach of experimental observation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.07399,
  title  = {STM as a single Majorana detector of Kitaev's chiral spin liquid},
  author = {Masafumi Udagawa and Shintaro Takayoshi and Takashi Oka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.07399},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

6+2 pages, 4 figures