English

Topological superconductivity of a two-dimensional electron gas at the (001) LaAlO\textsubscript{3}/SrTiO\textsubscript{3} interface

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2026-03-20 v1 Superconductivity

Abstract

We investigate the emergence of topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes in the two-dimensional electron gas formed at the LaAlO3_3/SrTiO3_3 (001) interface. Using a realistic multiband tight binding model that incorporates the t2gt_{2g} orbital structure together with atomic and Rashba spin-orbit couplings, we determine the topological phase diagrams for both fully two-dimensional and quasi-one-dimensional geometries. In the two-dimensional limit, we show that a finite out-of-plane magnetic-field component is required to drive a topological phase transition. In this case, the critical field is strongly band dependent, and for higher-lying bands, it is controlled by the interplay of spin and orbital Zeeman effects, as well as atomic spin-orbit coupling. Although a purely in-plane field is insufficient to induce the topological transition in a full 2D system, we demonstrate that a lateral confinement relaxes this constraint. In this case, the character of the edge modes depends sensitively on the field orientation, with out-of-plane fields producing conventional counterpropagating chiral modes and transverse in-plane fields giving rise to co-propagating antichiral modes. Finally, Majorana zero modes in LAO/STO nanowires with varying widths are analyzed. We demonstrate that subbands predominantly composed of dyz/xzd_{yz/xz} orbitals exhibit exceptionally long localization lengths, which may preclude the observation of Majorana bound states in nanowires of typical experimental dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.18621,
  title  = {Topological superconductivity of a two-dimensional electron gas at the (001) LaAlO\textsubscript{3}/SrTiO\textsubscript{3} interface},
  author = {Piotr Żeberek and Paweł Wójcik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.18621},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

17 pages, 12 figures