Corner- and sublattice-sensitive Majorana zero modes on the kagome lattice

Abstract

In a first-order topological phase with sublattice degrees of freedom, a change in the boundary sublattice termination has no effect on the existence of gapless boundary states in dimensions higher than one. However, such a change may strongly affect the physical properties of those boundary states. Motivated by this observation, we perform a systematic study of the impact of sublattice terminations on the boundary physics on the two-dimensional kagome lattice. We find that the energies of the Dirac points of helical edge states in two-dimensional first-order topological kagome insulators sensitively depend on the terminating sublattices at the edge. Remarkably, this property admits the realization of a time-reversal invariant second-order topological superconducting phase with highly controllable Majorana Kramers pairs at the corners and sublattice domain walls by putting the topological kagome insulator in proximity to a $d$-wave superconductor. Moreover, substituting the $d$-wave superconductor with a conventional $s$-wave superconductor, we find that highly controllable Majorana zero modes can also be realized at the corners and sublattice domain walls if an in-plane Zeeman field is additionally applied. Our study reveals promising platforms to implement highly controllable Majorana zero modes.

11 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Sublattice-sensitive Majorana Modes
• Higher-order topological heat conduction on a lattice for detection of corner states
• Tilted Dirac cones and topological transitions in strained kagome lattices
• Majorana corner states on the dice lattice
• Observation of topologically distinct corner states in "bearded" photonic Kagome lattices
• Meissner effect induced Majorana zero modes at small magnetic field
• Probing the pairing symmetry in kagome superconductors based on the single-particle spectrum
• Boundary obstructed topological superconductor in buckled honeycomb lattice under perpendicular electric field
• Magnetic flux induced higher-order topological superconductivity
• Tunable corner states in topological insulators with long-range hoppings and diverse shapes
• Multiple topological corner states in the continuum of extended kagome lattice
• Engineering Majorana Kramers Pairs In Synthetic High Spin Chern Insulators
• Majorana edge states in s-wave kagome superconductors with Rashba interaction