Stabilization of Majorana modes in vortices in the superconducting phase of topological insulators using topologically trivial bands

Abstract

If superconductivity is induced in the metallic surface states of topological insulators via proximity, Majorana modes will be trapped on the vortex cores. The same effects hold for doped topological insulators which become bulk s-wave superconductors as long as the doping does not exceed a critical values ${\mu }_c^{\pm }.$ It is this critical chemical potential at which the material forgets it arose from a band-inverted topological insulator; it loses its topological \emph{imprint.} For the most common classes of topological insulators, which can be modeled with a minimal 4-band Dirac model the values of ${\mu }_c^{\pm }$ can be easily calculated, but for materials with more complicated electronic structures such as HgTe or ScPtBi the result is unknown. We show that due to the hybridization with an additional Kramers' pair of topologically trivial bands the topological imprint of HgTe-like electronic structures (which includes the ternary Heusler compounds) can be widely extended for p-doping. As a practical consequence we consider the effects of such hybridization on the range of doping over which Majorana modes will be bound to vortices in superconducting topological insulators and show that the range is strongly extended for p-doping, and reduced for n-doping. This leaves open the possibility that other topological phenomena may be stabilized over a wider range of doping.

5 pages, 1 figure, Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (8)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Quantum Hall Effect from the Topological Surface States of Strained Bulk HgTe
• Observation of topological order in a Superconducting doped topological insulator (based on the Bi2Se3 class)
• Helical edge and surface states in HgTe quantum wells and bulk insulators
• Vortex Lines in Topological Insulator-Superconductor Heterostructures

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• Signature of a topological phase transition in the Josephson supercurrent through a topological insulator
• Dynamical Gate Tunable Supercurrents in Topological Josephson Junctions
• Multiple signatures of topological transitions for interacting fermions in chain lattices
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• Competing Vortex Topologies in Iron-based Superconductors
• Topological Vortex Phase Transitions in Iron-Based Superconductors
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• Majorana Flat Bands in the Vortex Line of Superconducting Weyl Semimetals
• Majorana vortex phases in time-reversal invariant higher-order topological insulators and topologically trivial insulators