Published July 15, 2010 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Majorana fermion chain at the quantum spin Hall edge

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Abstract

We study a realization of a 1D chain of Majorana bound states at the interfaces between alternating ferromagnetic and superconducting regions at a quantum spin Hall insulator edge. In the limit of well-separated Majoranas, the system can be mapped to the transverse field Ising model. The disordered critical point can be reached by tuning the relative magnitude or phases of the ferromagnetic and superconducting order parameters. We compute the voltage dependence of the tunneling current from a metallic tip into the Majorana chain as a direct probe of the random critical state.

Additional Information

© 2010 The American Physical Society. Received 3 May 2010; revised manuscript received 27 June 2010; published 15 July 2010. The authors thank L. Fu, C. L. Kane, and L. Molenkamp for useful conversations and acknowledge support from NSF under Grant No. DMR-0804413 V.S. and J.E.M. and from the Packard Foundation, The Sloan Foundation, the Research Corporation, and DARPA G.R..

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
19322
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20100806-141508064

Funding

NSF
DMR-0804413
Packard Foundation
Sloan Foundation
Research Corporation
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Dates

Created
2010-08-06
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-08
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Physics Department