High-resolution studies of the Majorana atomic chain platform

By B. Feldman, M. Randeria, Jian Li, Sangjun Jeon, Yonglong Xie, Zhijun Wang, I. Drozdov, Bogdan Andrei Bernevig, A. Yazdani. Nature Physics, 2016

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ordered assemblies of magnetic atoms on the surface of conventional superconductors can be used to engineer topological superconducting phases and realize Majorana fermion quasiparticles (MQPs) in a condensed matter setting. Recent experiments have shown that chains of Fe atoms on Pb generically have the required electronic characteristics to form a one-dimensional topological superconductor and have revealed spatially resolved signatures of localized MQPs at the ends of such chains. Here we report higher-resolution measurements of the same atomic chain system performed using a dilution refrigerator scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). With significantly better energy resolution than previous studies, we show that the zero-bias peak (ZBP) in Fe chains has no detectable splitting from hybridization with other states. The measurements also reveal that the ZBP exhibits a distinctive ‘double eye’ spatial pattern on nanometre length scales. Theoretically we show that this is a general consequence of STM measurements of MQPs with substantial spectral weight in the superconducting substrate, a conclusion further supported by measurements of Pb overlayers deposited on top of the Fe chains. Finally, we report experiments performed with superconducting tips in search of the particle–hole symmetric MQP signature expected in such measurements. High-resolution scanning tunnelling microscopy measurements show that chains of magnetic atoms on the surface of a superconductor provide a promising platform for realizing and manipulating Majorana fermion quasiparticles.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2346ed0b4007878477c84d7016bea9c6dd6731b

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. K. Flensberg
2. F. von Oppen
3. Göran Wendin
4. A. Stern
5. C. Beenakker
6. Masatoshi Sato
7. J. Alicea
8. Y. Ando

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. Göran Wendin
2. K. Flensberg
3. A. Stern
4. F. von Oppen

Citations in the corpus

• Quantum information processing with superconducting circuits: a review (2016, background): “The first experimental signatures of MBS in superconductor-semiconductor nanowires [164] have been confirmed [161, 167], and extended to superconductor-atomic chain platforms [168].”
• Engineered platforms for topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes (2021, background): “Panel b reprinted from ref.(96), Springer Nature Limited.”