Trapping Majorana zero modes in vortices of magnetic texture crystals coupled to nodal superconductors

Daniel Steffensen; Brian M. Andersen; Panagiotis Kotetes

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.104.174502

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Trapping Majorana zero modes in vortices of magnetic texture crystals coupled to nodal superconductors

Daniel Steffensen, Brian M. Andersen, Panagiotis Kotetes

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.104.174502 · Physical Review B

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Abstract

We propose a mechanism for opening a full bulk energy gap and inducing vortex Majorana zero modes (MZMs) in nodal superconductors (SCs). We show that this becomes possible by coupling the nodal SC of interest to a magnetic texture crystal. The latter consists of superpositions of magnetic textures which repeat periodically in space according to suitable wave vectors that enable spin-flip scattering between all pairs of nodes of the SC, and thus open a full gap in its bulk energy spectrum. In this event, MZMs can be trapped in spin or shift vortices introduced in the magnetic texture crystal. Our approach is generic and applies to nodal SCs of spin-singlet, -triplet, or -mixed type of pairing. Therefore it promises to find application in a variety of nodal SCs, where the magnetic textures appear either spontaneously due to electron-electron interactions or are imposed by nanomagnets or become induced by coupling to a lattice of localized magnetic moments.