ABSTRACT - DRUM - University of Maryland
ABSTRACT - DRUM - University of Maryland
ABSTRACT - DRUM - University of Maryland
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
find a realistic material in nature. Most electronic superconductors in metals have<br />
s-wave pairing, which can be traced back to the electron-phonon mediated pairing<br />
mechanism. To have the required p-wave pairing symmetry one clearly needs unconventional<br />
pairing mechanisms. There are a number <strong>of</strong> candidates, though, including<br />
the 3 He film in the superfluid A phase [44] and the oxide compound Sr 2 RuO 4 [45].<br />
Although a lot <strong>of</strong> experimental efforts have been taken, progress in identifying the<br />
topological superconductivity/superfluidity in both systems is quite limited. Among<br />
the many obstacles we just mention that in both cases, due to the spin degeneracy,<br />
to observe a single Majorana zero mode requires creating a half-quantum vortex in<br />
the superfluid [46], in which the phase <strong>of</strong> the order parameter and the Cooper pair<br />
spin vector both wind by π. However this type <strong>of</strong> vortices are not thermodynamically<br />
stable: Its free energy diverges logarithmically with the system size.<br />
This<br />
apparently hinders the observation <strong>of</strong> Majorana excitations. In addition, the unconventional<br />
p-wave pairing symmetry, believed to be caused by ferromagnetic spin<br />
fluctuations, results in very low superconducting transition temperature, making<br />
the experimental setup very delicate.<br />
Recent theoretical progress has revealed a completely new avenue towards realizing<br />
chiral p-wave superconductivity, which becomes by far the most promising<br />
direction in the search <strong>of</strong> non-Abelian superconductivity. The approach is to engineer<br />
chiral p-wave superconductor from conventional materials instead <strong>of</strong> trying<br />
one’s luck in nature. In particular, the stringent requirement <strong>of</strong> the p-wave pairing is<br />
removed and all the proposals only involve ordinary s-wave superconductivity. In the<br />
following we discuss three independent different proposals for the pratical realiza-<br />
19