Majorana zero modes in spintronics devices

Abstract

We show that topological phases should be realizable in readily available and well studied heterostructures. In particular we identify a new class of topological materials which are well known in spintronics: helical ferromagnet-superconducting junctions. We note that almost all previous work on topological heterostructures has focused on creating Majorana modes at the proximity interface in effectively two-dimensional or one-dimensional systems. The particular heterostructures we address exhibit finite range proximity effects leading to nodal superconductors with Majorana modes localized well away from this interface. To show this, we implement a Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) proximity numerical scheme, which importantly, involves two finite dimensions in a three dimensional junction. Incorporating this level of numerical complexity serves to distinguish ours from alternative numerical BdG approaches which are limited by generally assuming translational invariance or periodic boundary conditions along multiple directions. With this access to the edges, we are then able to illustrate in a concrete fashion the wavefunctions of Majorana zero modes, and, moreover, address finite size effects. In the process we establish consistency with a simple analytical model.

References in corpus (13)

• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in Ferromagnetic Atomic Chains on a Superconductor
• Spin-selective Peierls transition in interacting one-dimensional conductors with spin-orbit interaction
• Topological surface states in nodal superconductors
• Topological Superconductivity induced by Ferromagnetic Metal Chains
• Majorana Fermions and Odd-frequency Cooper Pairs in a Nano Wire
• Odd Triplet Pairing in clean Superconductor/Ferromagnet heterostructures
• Induced Triplet Pairing in clean s-wave Superconductor/Ferromagnet layered structures
• Odd triplet superconductivity in a superconductor/ferromagnet structure with a spiral magnetic structure
• Odd-frequency pair in topological superconductivity of 1D magnetic chain
• Proximity Effects in Conical-Ferromagnet/Superconductor bilayers
• Three-dimensional spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases: Fulde-Ferrell pairing, Majorana fermions, Weyl fermions and gapless topological superfluidity

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Topological edge states on time-periodically strained armchair graphene nanoribbons
• Spin-polarized Andreev tunneling through the Rashba chain