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Results for “Majorana mode”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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132 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Planar thermal Hall effect of topological bosons in the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl 3

The honeycomb magnet α-RuCl 3 has attracted considerable interest because it is proximate to the Kitaev Hamiltonian whose excitations are Majoranas and vortices. The thermal Hall conductivity κ xy of Majorana fermions is predicted to be half-quantized. Half-quantization of κxy/T (T, temperature) was recently reported, but this observation has proven difficult to reproduce. Here, we report detailed measurements of κ xy on α-RuCl3 with the magnetic field B ∥ a (zigzag axis). In our experiment, κ xy /T is observed to be strongly temperature dependent between 0.5 and 10 K. We show that its temperature profile matches the distinct form expected for topological bosonic modes in a Chern-insulator-like model. Our analysis yields magnon band energies in agreement with spectroscopic experiments. At high B, the spin excitations evolve into magnon-like modes with a Chern number of ~1. In conclusion, the bosonic character is incompatible with half-quantization of κ xy /T.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Moment method and continued fraction expansion in Floquet operator Krylov space

Recursion methods such as Krylov techniques map complex dynamics to an effective noninteracting problem in one dimension. For example, the operator Krylov space for Floquet dynamics can be mapped to the dynamics of an edge operator of the one-dimensional Floquet inhomogeneous transverse field Ising model (ITFIM), where the latter, after a Jordan-Wigner transformation, is a Floquet model of noninteracting Majorana fermions and the couplings correspond to Krylov angles. We present an application of this showing that a moment method exists where given an autocorrelation function, one can construct the corresponding Krylov angles and from that the corresponding Floquet ITFIM. Consequently, when no solutions for the Krylov angles are obtained, it indicates that the autocorrelation is not generated by unitary dynamics. We highlight this by studying certain special cases: stable m-period dynamics derived using the method of continued fractions, exponentially decaying, and power-law decaying stroboscopic dynamics. Remarkably, our examples of stable m-period dynamics correspond to m-period edge modes for the Floquet ITFIM where, deep in the chain, the couplings correspond to a critical phase. Furthermore our results pave the way to engineer Floquet systems with desired properties of edge modes and also provide examples of persistent edge modes in gapless Floquet systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Highly skewed current–phase relation in superconductor–topological insulator–superconductor Josephson junctions

Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) in proximity with superconductors are expected to exhibit exotic phenomena, such as topological superconductivity (TSC) and Majorana-bound states (MBS), which may have applications in topological quantum computation. In superconductor–TI–superconductor Josephson junctions, the supercurrent versus the phase difference between the superconductors, referred to as the current–phase relation (CPR), reveals important information including the nature of the superconducting transport. Here, we study the induced superconductivity in gate-tunable Josephson junctions (JJs) made from topological insulator BiSbTeSe 2 with superconducting Nb electrodes. We observe highly skewed (non-sinusoidal) CPR in these junctions. The critical current, or the magnitude of the CPR, increases with decreasing temperature down to the lowest accessible temperature ( T ~ 20 mK), revealing the existence of low-energy modes in our junctions. The gate dependence shows that close to the Dirac point the CPR becomes less skewed, indicating the transport is more diffusive, most likely due to the presence of electron/hole puddles and charge inhomogeneity. Our experiments provide strong evidence that superconductivity is induced in the highly ballistic topological surface states (TSS) in our gate-tunable TI-based JJs. Furthermore, the measured CPR is in good agreement with the prediction of a model which calculates the phase-dependent eigenstate energies in our system, considering the finite width of the electrodes, as well as the TSS wave functions extending over the entire circumference of the TI.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Higher-order topological superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene

In this work, we show that introducing spin-singlet or spin-triplet superconductivity into twisted bilayer graphene induces higher-order topological superconductivity. Multiple copies of C 2z ⁢T-protected Majorana Kramers pairs appear at corners on pairing domain walls. The topology originates from the anomaly analyzed in Song et al.—the absence of a lattice support—of the single-valley band structure of twisted bilayer graphene, which is protected by C 2z ⁢T and approximate particle-hole symmetry $\mathcal{P}$. We prove that any pairing (spin-singlet or spin-triplet) term preserving valley-U(1), spin-SU(2), time-reversal, C 2z ⁢T, and $\mathcal{P}$ must drive the system into a higher-order topological superconductor. Here spin-SU(2) is the global spin-SU(2) for the singlet pairing and is broken to U(1) for the triplet pairing. Using a Dirac Hamiltonian, we derive the corner modes and confirm with numerics. These corner states are stable even if $\mathcal{P}$ is weakly broken, which is true in experimental setups. Finally, we suggest experimental detection via the fractional Josephson effect in a TBG-TSC Josephson junction.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Investigating two-dimensional adjoint QCD on the lattice

We present our investigations of SU(N) adjoint QCD in two dimensions with one Majorana fermion on the lattice. We determine the relevant parameter range for the simulations with Wilson fermions and present results for Polyakov loop, chiral condensate, and string tension. In the theory with massive fermions, all observables we checked show qualitative agreement between numerical lattice data and theory, while the massless limit is more subtle since chiral and non-invertible symmetry of the continuum theory are explicitly broken by lattice regularization. In thermal compactification, we observe N perturbative vacua for the holonomy potential at high-T with instanton events connecting them, and a unique vacuum at low-T. At finite-N, this is a cross-over and it turns to a phase transition at large-N thermodynamic limit. In circle compactification with periodic boundary conditions, we observe a unique center-symmetric minimum at any radius. In continuum, the instantons in the thermal case carry zero modes (for even N) and indeed, in the lattice simulations, we observe that chiral condensate is dominated by instanton centers, where zero modes are localized. We present lattice results on the issue of confinement vs. screening in the theory and comment on the roles of chiral symmetry and non-invertible symmetry.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

New measurement of double- β decays of Mo 100 to excited states of Ru 100 with the CUPID-Mo experiment

The CUPID-Mo experiment, located at Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (France), was a demonstrator experiment for CUPID. It consisted of an array of 20 Li 2 100 MoO 4 (LMO) calorimeters each equipped with a Ge light detector (LD) for particle identification. In this work, we present the result of a search for two-neutrino and neutrinoless double beta decays of 100 Mo to the first 0 + and 2 + excited states of 100 Ru using the full CUPID-Mo exposure (2.71 kg yr of LMO). We measure the half-life of 2νββ decay to the $0^+_1$ state as $T^{2ν→0^+_1}_{1/2}$ = (7.5 ± 0.8 (stat.) $^{+0.4}_{-0.3}$ (syst.)) × 10 20 yr. The bolometric technique enables measurement of the electron energies as well as the gamma rays from nuclear de-excitation and this allows us to set new limits on the two-neutrino decay to the $2^+_1$ state of $T^{2ν→2^+_1}_{1/2}$ > 4.4×10 21 yr (90% c.i.) and on the neutrinoless modes of $T^{0ν→2^+_1}_{1/2}$ > 2.1×10 23 yr (90% c.i.), $T^{0ν→0^+_1}_{1/2}$ > 1.2 × 10 23 yr (90% c.i.). Information on the electrons spectral shape is obtained which allows us to make the first comparison of the single state (SSD) and higher state (HSD) 2νββ decay models for the $0^+_1$ excited state of 100 Ru.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗