Magnetic impurity chains on top of conventional superconductors are promising platforms to realize Majorana modes. Iron-based high-temperature superconductors are known in the vicinity of magnetic states due to the strong Hund's coupling in iron atoms. Here we propose that the line defects with missing Te/Se anions in Fe(Se,Te) superconductors provide the realization of intrinsic antiferromagnetic(AFM) chains with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Against conventional wisdom, Majorana zero modes (MZMs) can be robustly generated at these AFM chain ends. These results can consistently explain the recent experimental observation of zero-energy end states in line defects of monolayer Fe(Te,Se)/SrTiO3 by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements. Our research not only demonstrates an unprecedented interplay among native line defect, emergent magnetism and topological superconductivity but also explores a high-temperature platform for Majorana fermions.
@article{arxiv.2004.05848,
title = {Topological magnetic line defects in Fe(Te,Se) high-temperature superconductors},
author = {Xianxin Wu and Jia-Xin Yin and Chao-Xing Liu and Jiangping Hu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.05848},
year = {2020}
}