Majorana corner modes and tunable patterns in an altermagnet heterostructure
arXiv:2311.05814 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.108.205410
Abstract
The mutual competition and synergy of magnetism and superconductivity provide us with a very valuable opportunity to access topological superconductivity and Majorana Fermions. Here, we devise a heterostructure consisting of an -wave superconductor, a 2D topological insulator and an altermagnet, which is classified as the third magnet and featured by zero magnetization but spin polarization in both real and reciprocal spaces. We find that the altermagnet can induce mass terms at the edges that compete with electron pairing, and mass domains are formed at the corners of sample, resulting in zero-energy Majorana corner modes (MCMs). The presence or absence of MCMs can be engineered by only changing the direction of the Néel vector. Moreover, uniaxial strain can effectively manipulate the patterns of the MCMs, such as moving and interchanging MCMs. Experimental realization, remarkable advantages of our proposal and possible braiding are discussed.
Accepted by PRB, 5 pages main text + 13 pages SM
References in corpus (14)
- Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
- 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
- Electric Multipole Moments, Topological Multipole Moment Pumping, and Chiral Hinge States in Crystalline Insulators
- -dimensional edge states of rotation symmetry protected topological states
- Reflection symmetric second-order topological insulators and superconductors
- Higher-order topological insulators and semimetals on the breathing Kagome and pyrochlore lattices
- Colloquium: Majorana Fermions in nuclear, particle and solid-state physics
- Antiferromagnetism in RuO as -wave Pomeranchuk instability
- Electric control of Dirac quasiparticles by spin-orbit torque in an antiferromagnet
- Observation of a Majorana zero mode in a topologically protected edge channel
- Evidence for Helical Hinge Zero Modes in an Fe-Based Superconductor
- Tunable Majorana corner modes in noncentrosymmetric superconductors: Tunneling spectroscopy and edge imperfections