Interplay between altermagnetism and topological superconductivity on an unconventional superconducting platform

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical model exploring how altermagnetism influences topological phases and Majorana states in 2D p-wave superconductors, revealing tunable topological transitions and hybrid phases with potential for quantum applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework demonstrating how altermagnetic order can control topological superconducting phases and Majorana modes in unconventional superconductors.

Findings

Altermagnetism induces topological phase transitions in 2D p-wave superconductors.

Helical superconductor can become gapless topological with Majorana flat edge modes.

Hybrid superconductor phases feature dispersive and flat Majorana edge states.

Abstract

We propose a theoretical model to investigate the interplay between altermagnetism and $p$-wave superconductivity, with a particular focus on topological phase transitions in a two-dimensional (2D) $p$-wave superconductor, considering both chiral and helical phases. Our study reveals that the emergence of helical and chiral Majorana states can be tuned by the amplitude of a $d-$wave altermagnetic order parameter, with the outcome depending on the nature of the superconducting state. In the helical superconductor, such an altermagnet can induce a topological phase transition into a gapless topological superconductor hosting Majorana flat edge modes. On the other hand, in the chiral superconductor, the topological transition takes place between a topologically nontrivial gapped phase and a gapless nodal-line superconductor, where the Bogoliubov quasiparticle bands intersect at an isolated line in momentum space. Remarkably, we show that when such an altermagnet is coupled to a mixed-pairing superconductor, with both chiral and helical components, a hybrid topological phase emerges, featuring dispersive Majorana edge modes that coexist with nearly flat Majorana edge states. Our findings therefore establish a novel platform for controlling and manipulating Majorana modes in unconventional superconductors with vanishing total magnetization.