Evidence for dispersing 1D Majorana channels in an iron-based superconductor

Thursday, January 2, 2020 - 14:21 in Physics & Chemistry

The possible realization of Majorana fermions as quasiparticle excitations in condensed-matter physics has created much excitement. Most studies have focused on Majorana bound states; however, propagating Majorana states with linear dispersion have also been predicted. Here, we report scanning tunneling spectroscopic measurements of crystalline domain walls (DWs) in FeSe0.45Te0.55. We located DWs across which the lattice structure shifts by half a unit cell. These DWs have a finite, flat density of states inside the superconducting gap, which is a hallmark of linearly dispersing modes in one dimension. This signature is absent in DWs in the related superconductor, FeSe, which is not in the topological phase. Our combined data are consistent with the observation of dispersing Majorana states at a -phase shift DW in a proximitized topological material.

Read the whole article on Science NOW

More from Science NOW

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net