Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 59: TR: Topological Insulators 2 (jointly with HL and MA)
TT 59.3: Vortrag
Freitag, 18. März 2011, 11:00–11:15, HSZ 03
Majorana bound states without vortices in topological superconductors with electrostatic defects — •Michael Wimmer1, Anton Akhmerov1, Maryia Medvedyeva1, Jakub Tworzydlo2, and Carlo Beenakker1 — 1Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands — 2University of Warsaw, Poland
Vortices in two-dimensional superconductors with broken time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetry can bind states at zero excitation energy. These socalled Majorana bound states transform a thermal insulator into a thermal metal and may be used to encode topologically protected qubits. We identify an alternative mechanism for the formation of Majorana bound states, akin to the way in which Shockley states are formed on metal surfaces: An atomic-scale electrostatic line defect can have a pair of Majorana bound states at the end points. The Shockley mechanism explains the appearance of a thermal metal in vortex-free lattice models of chiral p-wave superconductors and (unlike the vortex mechanism) is also operative in the topologically trivial phase.