Superconducting topological surface states in the noncentrosymmetric bulk superconductor PbTaSe₂.

ABSTRACT: The search for topological superconductors (TSCs) is one of the most urgent contemporary problems in condensed matter systems. TSCs are characterized by a full superconducting gap in the bulk and topologically protected gapless surface (or edge) states. Within each vortex core of TSCs, there exists the zero-energy Majorana bound states, which are predicted to exhibit non-Abelian statistics and to form the basis of the fault-tolerant quantum computation. To date, no stoichiometric bulk material exhibits the required topological surface states (TSSs) at the Fermi level (E_F) combined with fully gapped bulk superconductivity. We report atomic-scale visualization of the TSSs of the noncentrosymmetric fully gapped superconductor PbTaSe₂. Using quasi-particle scatteri

SUBMITTER: Guan SY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5262470 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature