Topological Superconductivity without Proximity Effect

Majorana Fermions, strange particles that are their own antiparticles, were predicted in 1937 and have been sought after ever since. In condensed matter they are predicted to exist as vortex core or edge excitations in certain exotic superconductors. These are topological superconductors whose order parameter phase winds non-trivially in momentum space. In recent years, a new and promising route for realizing topological superconductors has opened due to advances in the field of topological insulators. Current proposals are based on semiconductor heterostructures, where spin-orbit coupled bands are split by a band gap or Zeeman field and superconductivity is induced by proximity to a conventional superconductor. Topological superconductivity is obtained in the interface layer. The proposed heterostructures typically include two or three layers of different materials. In the current work we propose a device based on materials with inherent spin-orbit coupling and an intrinsic tendency for superconductivity, eliminating the need for a separate superconducting layer. We study a lattice model that includes spin-orbit coupling as well as on-site and nearest neighbor interaction. Within this model we show that topological superconductivity is possible in certain regions of parameter space. These regions of non-trivial topology can be understood as a nodeless superconductor with d-wave symmetry which, due to the spin-orbit coupling, acquires an extra phase twist of $2\pi$.Comment: 5 Pages, 3 Figure

Simplified methods for calculating photodissociation rates

Simplified methods for calculating the transmission of solar UV radiation and the dissociation coefficients of various molecules are compared. A significant difference sometimes appears in calculations of the individual band, but the total transmission and the total dissociation coefficients integrated over the entire SR (solar radiation) band region agree well between the methods. The ambiguities in the solar flux data affect the calculated dissociation coefficients more strongly than does the method. A simpler method is developed for the purpose of reducing the computation time and computer memory size necessary for storing coefficients of the equations. The new method can reduce the computation time by a factor of more than 3 and the memory size by a factor of more than 50 compared with the Hudson-Mahle method, and yet the result agrees within 10 percent (in most cases much less) with the original Hudson-Mahle results, except for H2O and CO2. A revised method is necessary for these two molecules, whose absorption cross sections change very rapidly over the SR band spectral range