Shiba chains of scalar impurities on unconventional superconductors

Titus Neupert, A. Yazdani, and B. Andrei Bernevig
Phys. Rev. B 93, 094508 – Published 7 March 2016

Abstract

We show that a chain of nonmagnetic impurities deposited on a fully gapped two- or three-dimensional superconductor can become a topological one-dimensional superconductor with protected Majorana bound states at its end. A prerequisite is that the pairing potential of the underlying superconductor breaks the spin-rotation symmetry, as it is generically the case in systems with strong spin-orbit coupling. We illustrate this mechanism for a spinless triplet-superconductor (px+ipy) and a time-reversal symmetric Rashba superconductor with a mixture of singlet and triplet pairing. For the latter, we show that the impurity chain can be topologically nontrivial even if the underlying superconductor is topologically trivial.

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  • Received 10 January 2016
  • Revised 18 February 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.094508

©2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Titus Neupert

  • Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

A. Yazdani and B. Andrei Bernevig

  • Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

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Issue

Vol. 93, Iss. 9 — 1 March 2016

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