Majorana zero modes on a necklace

Jian Li, Titus Neupert, B. Andrei Bernevig, Ali Yazdani

Published 2014-04-15Version 1

Non-Abelian quasiparticles have been predicted to exist in a variety of condensed matter systems. Their defining property is that an adiabatic braid between two of them results in a nontrivial change of the quantum state of the system. To date, no experimental platform has reached the desired control over non-Abelian quasiparticles to demonstrate this remarkable property. The simplest non-Abelian quasiparticles -- the Majorana bound states (MBS) -- can occur in one-dimensional (1D) electronic nano-structures proximity-coupled to a bulk superconductor -- a platform that is being currently explored in great depth both theoretically and experimentally. When tuned appropriately, such nano-wires can localize MBS at their ends, a pair of which forms a two-level system that is robust to local perturbations. This constitutes a topologically protected qubit that can serve as the building block for a topological quantum computer. To implement braiding operations among the MBS, schemes that allow to move MBS across wire networks have been explored theoretically. Here, we propose a simpler alternative setup, based on chains of magnetic adatoms on the surface of a thin-film superconductor, in which the control over an externally applied magnetic field suffices to create and manipulate MBS. We consider specific 1D patterns of adatoms, which can be engineered with scanning-tunneling-microscope based lateral atomic manipulation techniques, and show that they allow for the creation, annihilation, adiabatic motion, and braiding of pairs of MBS by varying the magnitude and orientation of the external magnetic field.