Robust quantized thermal conductance of Majorana floating edge bands in d-wave superconductors

TL;DR

This paper introduces floating Majorana edge bands in 2D superconductors, demonstrating their quantized thermal conductance and robustness, offering new avenues for topological quantum computation.

Contribution

It identifies a minimal mechanism for FMEBs via anisotropic Wilson masses and demonstrates their realization in QAH insulators with d-wave superconductors.

Findings

Quantized total thermal conductance in two-terminal devices.

Half-quantized plateau in four-terminal geometries.

Robust thermal response under temperature, disorder, and chemical potential variations.

Abstract

We propose and characterize a new class of Majorana boundary states, i.e., floating Majorana edge bands (FMEBs), which emerge in two-dimensional (2D) superconductors that break time-reversal symmetry yet host helical-like transport. In contrast to conventional chiral or helical edge modes, FMEBs form isolated, momentum-separated counterpropagating Majorana modes detached from the bulk continuum. We identify a minimal mechanism for their emergence via anisotropic Wilson masses in a two-band Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) model, and demonstrate their microscopic realization in a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator proximitized by a $d$-wave superconductor. Using nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) simulations, we uncover clear transport fingerprints: a quantized total thermal conductance in two-terminal devices, and a robust half-quantized plateau in four-terminal geometries that cleanly distinguishes FMEBs from chiral $\mathcal{N}= \pm 2$ QAH phases. This thermal response remains remarkably stable under finite temperature, moderate long-range disorder, and finite chemical potential. Our findings establish FMEBs as an experimentally accessible route toward helical-like Majorana transport in systems without time-reversal symmetry, with direct implications for topological quantum computation.