Abstract
We study two microscopic models of topological insulators in contact with an -wave superconductor. In the first model the superconductor and the topological insulator are tunnel coupled via a layer of randomly distributed scalar and of randomly oriented spin impurities. Here, we demonstrate that spin-flip tunneling dominates over the spin-conserving one. In the second model the tunnel coupling is realized by a spatially nonuniform array of single-level quantum dots with randomly oriented spins. We find that the tunnel region forms a junction where the effective order parameter changes sign. Because of the random spin orientation, effectively both models exhibit time-reversal symmetry. The proposed junctions support topological superconductivity without magnetic fields and can be used to generate and manipulate Kramers pairs of Majorana fermions by gates.
- Received 1 July 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.237001
© 2015 American Physical Society