Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 71: Transport: Majorana Fermions (organized by TT)

TT 71.6: Invited Talk

Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 16:30–17:00, HSZ 03

Majorana Fermions in Chains of Magnetic Atoms on the Surface of a Superconductor — •Ali Yazdani — Princeton University

In this talk, I will describe a proposal and related experiments for realization of Majorana fermions in chains of magnetic atoms on the surface of a conventional superconductors. I will describe model calculations that motivate the experimental studies, which show that a spiral spin textured chain of atoms give rise to a topological superconducting phase when place in contact with a s-wave superconductor. Remarkably, only chains of as long as few tens of atoms is required to realize this phase in the calculations. I will also describe experiments in which we use in situ assembly of magnetic atoms on the surface of an s-wave superconductor and spectroscopic mapping with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to search for signatures of Majorana fermions at the end of such chains. Spin-polarized STM experiments in which we probe the spin texture of such chains will also be described.
S. Nadj-Perge, I.K. Drozdov, B.A. Bernevig, and A. Yazdani, Phys. Rev. B 88, 020407 (2013)
J. Klinovaja, P. Stano, A. Yazdani, and D. Loss, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 186805 (2013)