Spectroscopic fingerprint of chiral Majorana modes at the edge of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator/superconductor heterostructure.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31852824.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.1910967117 and PMC identifier 6955289.
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Abstract
With the recent discovery of the quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI), which exhibits the conductive quantum Hall edge states without external magnetic field, it becomes possible to create a topological superconductor (SC) by introducing superconductivity into these edge states. In this case, 2 distinct topological superconducting phases with 1 or 2 chiral Majorana edge modes were theoretically predicted, characterized by Chern numbers (N) of 1 and 2, respectively. We present spectroscopic evidence from Andreev reflection experiments for the presence of chiral Majorana modes in an Nb/(Cr<sub>0.12</sub>Bi<sub>0.26</sub>Sb<sub>0.62</sub>)<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub> heterostructure with distinct signatures attributed to 2 different topological superconducting phases. The results are in qualitatively good agreement with the theoretical predictions.