Majorana modes with side features in magnet-superconductor hybrid systems

Magnet-superconductor hybrid (MSH) systems are promising platforms for hosting Majorana zero modes (MZMs), crucial for fault-tolerant quantum computing. This research uses density functional theory to derive an 80-band superconducting model for an MSH system (manganese chain on niobium superconductor). The system exhibits topological superconductivity with MZMs showing non-universal spatial patterns and spectral weight accumulation on the magnetic chain's sides. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy experiments confirm these side features, challenging the notion of point-like MZMs and suggesting side features might be common in topologically non-trivial MSH structures with small spectral gaps.

Daniel Crawford, Eric Mascot, Makoto Shimizu, Philip Beck, Jens Wiebe, Roland Wiesendanger, Harald O. Jeschke, Dirk K. Morr, Stephan Rachel