STM as a single Majorana detector of Kitaev's chiral spin liquid

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel STM-based detection scheme for Majorana zero modes in Kitaev's chiral spin liquid, demonstrating that differential conductance measurements can reveal vison-Majorana interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a local detection method using STM to identify Majorana zero modes via vison-hole composites in Kitaev's model, with analytical expressions for conductance features.

Findings

Differential conductance shows split peaks due to vison-hole resonant tunneling.

Peak splitting scales with vison-hole binding energy, comparable to Majorana gap.

Method is experimentally feasible within current STM capabilities.

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a local detection scheme for the Majorana zero mode (MZM) carried by a vison in Kitaev's chiral spin liquid (CSL) using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The STM introduces a single Majorana into the system through hole/charge injection and the Majorana interacts with the MZM to form a stable composite object. We derive the exact analytical expression of single-hole Green's function in the Mott insulating limit of Kitaev's model and show that the differential conductance has split peaks, as a consequence of resonant tunneling through the vison-hole composite. The peak splitting scales with the binding energy of vison-hole composite, which is comparable to the Majorana gap in CSL, well within the reach of experimental observation.