Testable Signatures of Quantum Nonlocality in a Two-Dimensional Chiral $p$-Wave Superconductor

Testable Signatures of Quantum Nonlocality in a Two-Dimensional Chiral $p$ -Wave Superconductor

Sumanta Tewari, Chuanwei Zhang, S. Das Sarma, Chetan Nayak, and Dung-Hai Lee

Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 027001 – Published 17 January 2008

Abstract

A class of topological excitations—the odd-winding number vortices—in a spinless 2D chiral $p$ -wave ( $p_{x} + i p_{y}$ ) superconductor traps Majorana fermion states in the vortex cores. For a dilute gas of such vortices, the lowest energy fermionic eigenstates are intrinsically nonlocal. We predict two testable signatures of this unusual quantum nonlocality in quasiparticle tunneling experiments. We discuss why the associated teleportationlike phenomenon does not imply the violation of causality.

Received 31 March 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.027001

Authors & Affiliations

Sumanta Tewari¹, Chuanwei Zhang¹, S. Das Sarma¹, Chetan Nayak^2,3, and Dung-Hai Lee^4,5

¹Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
²Microsoft Station Q, CNSI Building, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93108, USA
³Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA
⁴Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁵Material Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

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Vol. 100, Iss. 2 — 18 January 2008

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