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Register a new userMajorana surface states of superfluid 3He A- and B-phases in a slab
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Motivated by experiments on the superfluid 3He confined in a thin slab, we design a concrete experimental setup for observing the Majorana surface states. We solve the quasi-classical Eilenberger equation, which is quantitatively reliable, to evaluate several quantities, such as local density of states (LDOS), mass current for the A-phase, and spin current for the B-phase. In connection with realistic slab samples, we consider the upper and lower surfaces and the side edges including the corners with several thicknesses. Consequently the influence on the Majorana zero modes from the spatial variation of l-vector for the A-phase in thick slabs and the energy splitting of the zero-energy quasi-particles for the B-phase confined in thin slabs are demonstrated. The corner of slabs in the B-phase is accompanied by the unique zero-energy LDOS of corner modes. On the basis of the quantitative calculation, we propose several feasible and verifiable experiments to check the existence of the Majorana surface states, such as the measurement of specific heat, edge current, and anisotropic spin susceptibility.
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Motivated by a recent experiment on the superfluid 3He A-phase with a chiral p-wave pairing confined in a thin slab, we propose designing a concrete experimental setup for observing the Majorana edge modes that appear around the circumference edge region. We solve the quasi-classical Eilenberger equation, which is quantitatively reliable, to evaluate several observables. To derive the property inherent to the Majorana edge state, the full quantum mechanical Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation is solved in this setting. On the basis of the results obtained, we perform decisive experiments to check the Majorana nature.
The theoretical study of topological superfluids and superconductors has so far been carried out largely as a translation of the theory of noninteracting topological insulators into the superfluid language, whereby one replaces electrons by Bogoliubov quasiparticles and single-particle band Hamiltonians by Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonians. Band insulators and superfluids are, however, fundamentally different: while the former exist in the absence of inter-particle interactions, the latter are broken symmetry states that owe their very existence to such interactions. In particular, unlike the static energy gap of a band insulator, the gap in a superfluid is due to a dynamical order parameter that is subject to both thermal and quantum fluctuations. In this work, we explore the consequences of bulk quantum fluctuations of the order parameter in the $B$ phase of superfluid $^3$He on the topologically protected Majorana surface states. Neglecting the high-energy amplitude modes, we find that one of the three spin-orbit Goldstone modes in $^3$He-$B$ couples to the surface Majorana fermions. This coupling in turn induces an effective short-range two-body interaction between the Majorana fermions, with coupling constant inversely proportional to the strength of the nuclear dipole-dipole interaction in bulk $^3$He. A mean-field theory estimate of the value of this coupling suggests that the surface Majorana fermions in $^3$He-$B$ are in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition to a gapped time-reversal symmetry breaking phase.
We propose a method utilizing edge current to observe Majorana fermions in the surface Andreev bound state for the superfluid $^3$He A- and B-phases. The proposal is based on self-consistent analytic solutions of quasi-classical Greens function with an edge. The local density of states and edge mass current in the A-phase or edge spin current in the B-phase can be obtained from these solutions. The edge current carried by the Majorana fermions is partially cancelled by quasiparticles (QPs) in the continuum state outside the superfluid gap. QPs contributing to the edge current in the continuum state are distributed in energy even away from the superfluid gap. The effect of Majorana fermions emerges in the depletion of the edge current by temperature within a low-temperature range. The observations that the reduction in the mass current is changed by $T^2$-power in the A-phase and the reduction in the spin current is changed by $T^3$-power in the B-phase establish the existence of Majorana fermions. We also point out another possibility for observing Majorana fermions by controlling surface roughness.
The total angular momentum associated with the edge mass current flowing at the boundary in the superfluid $^3$He A-phase confined in a disk is proved to be $L=Nhbar/2$, consisting of $L^{rm MJ}=Nhbar$ from the Majorana quasi-particles (QPs) and $L^{rm cont}=-Nhbar/2$ from the continuum state. We show it based on an analytic solution of the chiral order parameter for quasi-classical Eilenberger equation. Important analytic expressions are obtained for mass current, angular momentum, and density of states (DOS). Notably the DOS of the Majorana QPs is exactly $N_0/2$ ($N_0$: normal state DOS) responsible for the factor 2 difference between $L^{rm MJ}$ and $L^{rm cont}$. The current decreases as $E^{-3}$ against the energy $E$, and $L(T) propto -T^2$. This analytic solution is fully backed up by numerically solving the Eilenberger equation. We touch on the so-called intrinsic angular momentum problem.
A concrete and experimentally feasible example for testing the putative Majorana zero energy state bound in a vortex is theoretically proposed for a parallel plate geometry of superfluid $^3$He-A phase. We examine the experimental setup in connection with ongoing rotating cryostat experiments. The theoretical analysis is based on the well-established Ginzburg--Landau functional, supplemented by microscopic calculations of the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equation, both of which allow the precise location of the parameter regions of the Majorana state to be found in realistic situations.
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