Majorana fermions in a periodically driven semiconductor-superconductor Heterostructure

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190, China
² School of Physical Science and Technology, Yunnan University - Kunming 650000, China

^(a) ccwu@iphy.ac.cn

Received: 19 July 2013
Accepted: 14 October 2013

Abstract

We propose a new approach to create Majorana fermions at the edge of a periodically driven semiconductor-superconductor Heterostructure. We calculate the quasi-energy spectrum of the periodically driven Heterostructure by using Floquet's theory. When the interaction between different Brillouin zones of quasi-energy is neglected, one Majorana fermion with zero quasi-energy can be created at each edge of the Heterostructure when the ratio of driven amplitude and driven frequency is larger than a minimum. Furthermore, Majorana fermions with nonzero quasi-energy emerge when the driven frequency is low and the interaction between different Brillouin zones of quasi-energy needs to be considered. We also discuss the experimental protocol of creating Majorana fermions in the periodically driven Heterostructure.