Recently, the search for Majorana fermions (MFs) has become one of the most important and exciting issues in condensed matter physics since such an exotic quasiparticle is expected to potentially give rise to unprecedented quantum phenomena whose fun
ctional properties will be used to develop future quantum technology. Theoretically, the MFs may reside in various types of topological superconductor materials that is characterized by the topologically protected gapless surface state which are essentially an Andreev bound state. Superconducting doped topological insulators and topological crystalline insulators are promising candidates to harbor the MFs. In this review, we discuss recent progress and understanding on the research of MFs based on time-reversal-invariant superconducting topological materials to deepen our understanding and have a better outlook on both the search for and realization of MFs in these systems. We also discuss some advantages of these bulk systems to realize MFs including remarkable superconducting robustness against nonmagnetic impurities.
It has been widely believed that half quantum vortices are indispensable to realize topological stable Majorana zero modes and non-Abelian anyons in spinful superconductors/superfluids. Contrary to this wisdom, we here demonstrate that integer quantu
m vortices in spinful superconductors can host topologically stable Majorana zero modes because of the mirror symmetry. The symmetry protected Majorana fermions may exhibit non-Abelian anyon braiding.
The possible stable singular vortex (SV) and half-quantum vortex (HQV) of the superfluid $^3$He-A phase confined in restricted geometries are investigated. The associated low-energy excitations are calculated in connection with the possible existence
of Majorana zero modes obeying non-Abelian statistics. The energetics between those vortices is carefully examined using the standard Ginzburg-Landau (GL) functional with a strong-coupling correction. The Fermi liquid effect, which is not included in the GL functional, is considered approximately within the London approach. This allows us to determine the stability regions in pressure, temperature, and applied field for SV and HQV. The existence of the Majorana zero mode and its statistics, either Abelian or non-Abelian under braiding of SVs, is studied by solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equation for spinful chiral p-wave superfluids at sufficiently low temperatures. We determined several conditions controllable external parameters for realizing the non-Abelian statistics of Majorana zero modes e.g., pressure, field direction, and strength.
