Local density of states in two-dimensional topological superconductors under a magnetic field: signature of an exterior Majorana bound state

TL;DR

This paper investigates the local density of states in two-dimensional topological superconductors under magnetic fields, revealing signatures of exterior Majorana bound states and their spin polarization, with implications for detection and control.

Contribution

It demonstrates the spin polarization of exterior Majorana states in topological insulators and explores how magnetic fields influence their properties, providing new insights into Majorana physics.

Findings

Exterior Majorana states shrink with increasing magnetic field.

Spin polarization of Majorana states depends on the system's dispersion.

Magnetic field can tune the radius of Majorana states.

Abstract

We study quasiparticle states on a surface of a topological insulator (TI) with proximity-induced superconductivity under an external magnetic field. An applied magnetic field creates two Majorana bound states: a vortex Majorana state localized inside a vortex core and an exterior Majorana state localized along a circle centered at the vortex core. We calculate the spin-resolved local density of states (LDOS) and demonstrate that the shrinking of the radius of the exterior Majorana state, predicted in Ref. [R. S. Akzyanov et al., Phys. Rev. B 94, 125428 (2016)], under a strong magnetic field can be seen in LDOS without smeared out by non-zero-energy states. The spin-resolved LDOS further reveals that the spin of the exterior Majorana state is strongly polarized. Accordingly, the induced odd-frequency spin-triplet pairs are found to be spin-polarized as well. In order to detect the exterior Majorana states, however, the Fermi energy should be closed to the Dirac point to avoid contributions from continuum levels. We also study a different two-dimensional topological-superconducting system where a two-dimensional electron gas with the spin-orbit coupling is sandwiched between an s-wave superconductor and a ferromagnetic insulator. We show that the radius of an exterior Majorana state can be tuned by an applied magnetic field. However, on the contrary to the results at a TI surface, neither the exterior Majorana state nor the induced odd-frequency spin-triplet pairs are spin-polarized. We conclude that the spin-polarization of the Majorana state is attributed to the spin-polarized Landau level which is characteristic for systems with the Dirac-like dispersion.