Majorana Signatures in Planar Tunneling through a Kitaev Spin Liquid

TL;DR

This paper proposes a planar tunneling method to detect Majorana modes in a Kitaev spin liquid, linking measurable conductance features to fractionalized excitations and enhancing detection signals.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable planar tunneling setup that directly probes vacancy-bound Majorana modes via spin correlations, improving detection sensitivity.

Findings

Localized Majorana states produce sharp near-zero-bias conductance features.

Planar tunneling enhances signal strength compared to STM measurements.

The method provides a realistic approach to detect Majorana excitations in Kitaev materials.

Abstract

We propose a planar tunneling setup to probe vacancy-bound Majorana modes in the chiral Kitaev spin liquid. In this geometry, the inelastic tunneling conductance can be expressed directly in terms of real-space spin correlations, establishing a link between measurable spectra and the underlying fractionalized excitations. We show that spin vacancies host localized Majorana states that generate sharp near-zero-bias features, well separated from the continuum of bulk spin excitations. Compared to local STM measurements, the planar configuration naturally enhances the signal by coherently summing over multiple vacancies, reducing spatial resolution requirements. Our results demonstrate a realistic and scalable route to detect Majorana excitations in Kitaev materials.