Majorana and parafermion corner states from two coupled sheets of bilayer graphene

Abstract

In this work, the authors propose a theoretical realization of an interacting second-order topological superconductor exhibiting exotic parafermion corner states in a setup based on bilayer graphene. In particular, the authors consider an array of coupled one-dimensional wires arising in bilayer graphene due to electrostatic confinement. The interplay between several competing interwire tunneling processes, a small in-plane magnetic field, and weak proximity-induced superconductivity is shown to lead to the formation of Majorana corner states in the non-interacting case and of exotic parafermion zero modes in the presence of strong electron-electron interactions.

Topics & Concepts