Two-dimensional topological superconductivity in Pb/Co/Si(111)

Gerbold C. Ménard, Sébastien Guissart, Christophe Brun, Raphaël T. Leriche, Mircea Trif, François Debontridder, Dominique Demaille, Dimitri Roditchev, Pascal Simon () and Tristan Cren ()
Additional contact information
Gerbold C. Ménard: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Sébastien Guissart: Université Paris-Saclay
Christophe Brun: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Raphaël T. Leriche: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Mircea Trif: Université Paris-Saclay
François Debontridder: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Dominique Demaille: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Dimitri Roditchev: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588
Pascal Simon: Université Paris-Saclay
Tristan Cren: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) CNRS-UMR 7588

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Just like insulators can present topological phases characterized by Dirac edge states, superconductors can exhibit topological phases characterized by Majorana edge states. In particular, one-dimensional topological superconductors are predicted to host zero-energy Majorana fermions at their extremities. By contrast, two-dimensional superconductors have a one-dimensional boundary which would naturally lead to propagating Majorana edge states characterized by a Dirac-like dispersion. In this paper we present evidences of one-dimensional dispersive in-gap edge states surrounding a two-dimensional topological superconducting domain consisting of a monolayer of Pb covering magnetic Co–Si islands grown on Si(111). We interpret the measured dispersive in-gap states as a spatial topological transition with a gap closure. Our method could in principle be generalized to a large variety of heterostructures combining a Rashba superconductor with a magnetic layer in order to be used as a platform for engineering topological quantum phases.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02192-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-02192-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02192-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().