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Topological superconducting phase in helical Shiba chains

Falko Pientka, Leonid I. Glazman, and Felix von Oppen
Phys. Rev. B 88, 155420 – Published 15 October 2013

Abstract

Recently, it has been suggested that topological superconductivity and Majorana end states can be realized in a chain of magnetic impurities on the surface of an s-wave superconductor when the magnetic moments form a spin helix as a result of the RKKY interaction mediated by the superconducting substrate. Here, we investigate this scenario theoretically by developing a tight-binding Bogoliubov-de Gennes description starting from the Shiba bound states induced by the individual magnetic impurities. While the resulting model Hamiltonian has similarities with the Kitaev model for one-dimensional spinless p-wave superconductors, there are also important differences, most notably the long-range nature of hopping and pairing as well as the complex hopping amplitudes. We use both analytical and numerical approaches to explore the consequences of these differences for the phase diagram and the localization properties of the Majorana end states when the Shiba chain is in a topological superconducting phase.

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  • Received 26 August 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.155420

©2013 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Falko Pientka1, Leonid I. Glazman2, and Felix von Oppen1

  • 1Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
  • 2Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA

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Issue

Vol. 88, Iss. 15 — 15 October 2013

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