Physics – Condensed Matter – Strongly Correlated Electrons
Scientific paper
2009-12-22
Phys. Rev. B 82, 094522 (2010)
Physics
Condensed Matter
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Revised and expanded: 7 pages, 3 figures
Scientific paper
10.1103/PhysRevB.82.094522
In 2D chiral p-wave superconductors, the zero-energy Majorana fermion excitations trapped at vortex cores follow non-Abelian statistics which can be potentially exploited to build a topological quantum computer. The Majorana states are protected from the thermal effects by the mini-gap, $\Delta^2/\epsilon_F$ ($\Delta$:bulk gap, $\epsilon_F$: Fermi energy), which is the excitation gap to the higher-energy, non-topological, bound states in the vortex cores. Robustness to thermal effects is guaranteed only when $T \ll \Delta^2/\epsilon_F \sim 0.1$ mK, which is a very severe experimental constraint. Here we show that when s-wave superconductivity is proximity-induced on the surface of a topological insulator or a spin-orbit-coupled semiconductor, as has been recently suggested, the mini-gaps of the resultant non-Abelian states can be orders of magnitude larger than in a chiral p-wave superconductor. Specifically, for interfaces with high barrier transparencies, the mini-gap can be as high as $\sim \Delta \gg \Delta^2/\epsilon_F $, where $\Delta$ is the bulk gap of the s-wave superconductor responsible for the proximity effect.
Lutchyn Roman M.
Sarma Sankar Das
Sau Jay D.
Tewari Sumanta
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