Fractional chiral superconductors
Two-dimensional px+ipy topological superconductors host gapless Majorana edge modes, as well as Majorana bound states at the core of h/2e vortices. Here we establish the possibility of realizing the fractional counterpart of this phase: a fractional chiral superconductor. This exotic phase is shown...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/21714 https://doi.org/10.17169/refubium-25002 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.235144 |
| Summary: | Two-dimensional px+ipy topological superconductors host gapless Majorana edge modes, as well as Majorana bound states at the core of h/2e vortices. Here we establish the possibility of realizing the fractional counterpart of this phase: a fractional chiral superconductor. This exotic phase is shown to give rise to a plethora of non-Abelian bulk excitations and a chiral Z2m parafermion theory on the edge of the sample, where m is an odd integer. In addition, we demonstrate that Z2m parafermionic bound states reside at the cores of h/2e vortices. In certain geometries, the system can support a fractional Josephson junction with 4πm periodicity, reflecting the underlying non-Abelian excitations. Finally, we show that the tunneling density of states associated with this edge theory exhibits an anomalous energy dependence of the form ωm−1. Our results are demonstrated through an explicit tractable model, composed of an array of coupled Rashba wires in the presence of strong interactions, Zeeman field, and proximity coupling to an s-wave superconductor. |
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