Topological Superconductivity on the Surface of Fe-Based Superconductors

TLDR

As one of the simplest systems for realizing Majorana fermions, the topological superconductor plays an important role in both condensed matter physics and quantum computations. Based on ab initio calculations and the analysis of an effective 8‑band model with superconducting pairing, we demonstrate that the three‑dimensional extended s‑wave Fe‑based superconductors such as Fe₁₊ySe₀.₅Te₀.₅ have a metallic topologically nontrivial band structure and exhibit a normal‑topological‑normal superconductivity phase transition on the (001) surface by tuning the bulk carrier doping level. In the topological superconductivity phase, a Majorana zero mode is trapped at the end of a magnetic vortex line, the surface TSC phase exists only up to a certain bulk pairing gap, a temperature‑driven normal‑topological phase transition occurs, and these results provide an effective route to realize TSC and Majorana fermions in a broad class of superconductors.

Abstract

As one of the simplest systems for realizing Majorana fermions, the topological superconductor plays an important role in both condensed matter physics and quantum computations. Based on ab initio calculations and the analysis of an effective 8-band model with superconducting pairing, we demonstrate that the three-dimensional extended s-wave Fe-based superconductors such as Fe_{1+y}Se_{0.5}Te_{0.5} have a metallic topologically nontrivial band structure, and exhibit a normal-topological-normal superconductivity phase transition on the (001) surface by tuning the bulk carrier doping level. In the topological superconductivity (TSC) phase, a Majorana zero mode is trapped at the end of a magnetic vortex line. We further show that the surface TSC phase only exists up to a certain bulk pairing gap, and there is a normal-topological phase transition driven by the temperature, which has not been discussed before. These results pave an effective way to realize the TSC and Majorana fermions in a large class of superconductors.