Nearly quantized conductance plateau of vortex zero mode in an iron-based superconductor

Majorana zero modes (MZMs) are spatially localized, zero-energy fractional quasiparticles with non-Abelian braiding statistics that hold promise for topological quantum computing. Owing to the particle-antiparticle equivalence, MZMs exhibit quantized conductance at low temperature. By using variable...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhu, Shiyu, Kong, Lingyuan, Cao, Lu, Chen, Hui, Papaj, Michal, Du, Shixuan, Xing, Yuqing, Liu, Wenyao, Wang, Dongfei, Shen, Chengmin, Yang, Fazhi, Schneeloch, John, Zhong, Ruidan, Gu, Genda, Fu, Liang, Zhang, Yu-Yang, Ding, Hong, Gao, Hong-Jun
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129968
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Summary:Majorana zero modes (MZMs) are spatially localized, zero-energy fractional quasiparticles with non-Abelian braiding statistics that hold promise for topological quantum computing. Owing to the particle-antiparticle equivalence, MZMs exhibit quantized conductance at low temperature. By using variable-tunnel-coupled scanning tunneling spectroscopy, we studied tunneling conductance of vortex bound states on FeTe0.55Se0.45 superconductors. We report observations of conductance plateaus as a function of tunnel coupling for zero-energy vortex bound states with values close to or even reaching the 2e2/h quantum conductance (where e is the electron charge and h is Planck's constant). By contrast, no plateaus were observed on either finite energy vortex bound states or in the continuum of electronic states outside the superconducting gap. This behavior of the zero-mode conductance supports the existence of MZMs in FeTe0.55Se0.45