scholarly journals Majorana fermions emerging from magnetic nanoparticles on a superconductor without spin-orbit coupling

2011 ◽  
Vol 84 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
T.-P. Choy ◽  
J. M. Edge ◽  
A. R. Akhmerov ◽  
C. W. J. Beenakker
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Nanoparticles ◽  
Orbit Coupling ◽  
Majorana Fermions ◽  
Spin Orbit Coupling ◽  
Spin Orbit

scholarly journals Formation of Majorana fermions in finite-size graphene strips

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vardan Kaladzhyan ◽  
Cristina Bena
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Finite Size ◽  
Inhomogeneous Magnetic Field ◽  
Orbit Coupling ◽  
Open Boundary ◽  
Majorana Fermions ◽  
Spin Orbit Coupling ◽  
Spin Orbit ◽  
Open Boundary Conditions

We investigate the formation of Majorana fermions in finite-size graphene strips with open boundary conditions in both directions, in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field and in the proximity of a superconducting substrate. We show that for long enough strips the Majorana states can form in the presence of a Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling, as well as in the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field. We find that, unlike infinite graphene ribbons in which Majorana states arise solely close to the bottom of the band and the Van Hove singularities, for finite-size systems this can happen also at much smaller doping values, close to the Dirac points, and depends strongly on the type of the short edges of the systems (e.g. armchair vs. zigzag), as well as on the width of the ribbons.

scholarly journals Observation of chiral surface excitons in a topological insulator Bi2Se3

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (10) ◽  
pp. 4006-4011 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.-H. Kung ◽  
A. P. Goyal ◽  
D. L. Maslov ◽  
X. Wang ◽  
A. Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Polarized Light ◽  
Orbit Coupling ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Composite Particles ◽  
Spin Orbit Coupling ◽  
Spin Orbit ◽  
Excitation Energies ◽  
Circularly Polarized Light ◽  
Pl Emission ◽  
Strong Spin

The protected electron states at the boundaries or on the surfaces of topological insulators (TIs) have been the subject of intense theoretical and experimental investigations. Such states are enforced by very strong spin–orbit interaction in solids composed of heavy elements. Here, we study the composite particles—chiral excitons—formed by the Coulomb attraction between electrons and holes residing on the surface of an archetypical 3D TI,Bi2Se3. Photoluminescence (PL) emission arising due to recombination of excitons in conventional semiconductors is usually unpolarized because of scattering by phonons and other degrees of freedom during exciton thermalization. On the contrary, we observe almost perfectly polarization-preserving PL emission from chiral excitons. We demonstrate that the chiral excitons can be optically oriented with circularly polarized light in a broad range of excitation energies, even when the latter deviate from the (apparent) optical band gap by hundreds of millielectronvolts, and that the orientation remains preserved even at room temperature. Based on the dependences of the PL spectra on the energy and polarization of incident photons, we propose that chiral excitons are made from massive holes and massless (Dirac) electrons, both with chiral spin textures enforced by strong spin–orbit coupling. A theoretical model based on this proposal describes quantitatively the experimental observations. The optical orientation of composite particles, the chiral excitons, emerges as a general result of strong spin–orbit coupling in a 2D electron system. Our findings can potentially expand applications of TIs in photonics and optoelectronics.

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