English

Majorana zero modes in superconductor-magnet heterostructures with d-wave order

Superconductivity 2026-02-11 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions in proximity to superconductors offer a route to engineering topological superconductivity due to the synthetic spin-orbit coupling engendered by the spin twist of the skyrmion texture. Previous theoretical works show that this leads to Majorana zero modes (MZMs) in skyrmion-vortex pairs for s-wave superconductors. Here we investigate this mechanism in fully gapped d+is and d+id superconductors. We find the surprising result that while stable MZMs are found in large parts of the phase diagram, strongly enhanced d-wave pairing or stronger skyrmion-induced spin twisting can in fact destroy topology unlike in s-wave superconductors. This effect can be understood from the non-trivial spatial structure of the d-wave pairing, and mixing of odd and even angular-momentum pairing channels in a rotated frame which untwists the skyrmion texture. Our results inform the feasibility of realizing MZMs with unconventional superconductors in such heterostructures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.09156,
  title  = {Majorana zero modes in superconductor-magnet heterostructures with d-wave order},
  author = {Bastien Fajardo and T. Pereg-Barnea and Arun Paramekanti and Kartiek Agarwal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09156},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 + 4 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:28:45.395Z