Single branch of chiral Majorana modes from doubly degenerate Fermi surfaces

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel method to realize chiral Majorana fermions in superconducting systems with degenerate Fermi surfaces and $p ext{-}i s$ pairing, using boundary kinks and magnetic domain walls for control.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach starting from degenerate Fermi surfaces without spin-orbit coupling to generate chiral Majorana modes via boundary kinks.

Findings

Chiral Majorana fermions can be realized on magnetic domain walls.

Surface magnetization exhibits a magnetoelectric effect.

External magnetic fields can control the propagation of Majorana modes.

Abstract

Majorana fermions are often proposed to be realized by first singling out one Fermi surface without spin degeneracy via spin-orbit coupling, and then imposing boundaries or defects. In this work, we take a different route starting with two degenerate Fermi surfaces without spin-orbit coupling, and show that by the method of "kink on boundary", the dispersive chiral Majorana fermions can be realized in superconducting systems with $p\pm is$ pairings. The surfaces of these systems develop spontaneous magnetizations whose directions are determined by the boundary orientations and the phase difference between the $p$ and $s$-component gap functions. Along the magnetic domain walls on the surface, there exist chiral Majorana fermions propagating unidirectionally, which can be conveniently dragged and controlled by external magnetic fields. Furthermore, the surface magnetization is shown to be a magnetoelectric effect based on a Ginzburg-Landau free energy analysis. We also discuss how to use the proximity effects to realize chiral Majorana fermions by performing the "kink on boundary" method.