- Access by Xinjiang University
Robust quantized thermal conductance of Majorana floating edge bands in -wave superconductors
Phys. Rev. B 113, 155407 – Published 6 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cpp8-bgz5
Abstract
We propose and characterize a different class of Majorana boundary states, i.e., floating Majorana edge bands (FMEBs), which emerge in two-dimensional superconductors that break time-reversal symmetry yet host helical-like transport. In contrast to conventional chiral or helical edge modes, FMEBs form isolated, momentum-separated counterpropagating Majorana modes detached from the bulk continuum. We identify a minimal mechanism for their emergence via anisotropic Wilson masses in a two-band Bogoliubov–de Gennes model, and demonstrate their microscopic realization in a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator proximitized by a -wave superconductor. Using nonequilibrium Green's function simulations, we uncover clear transport fingerprints: a quantized total thermal conductance in two-terminal devices, and a robust half-quantized plateau in four-terminal geometries that cleanly distinguishes FMEBs from chiral QAH phases. This thermal response remains remarkably stable under finite temperature, moderate long-range disorder, and finite chemical potential. Our findings establish FMEBs as an experimentally accessible route toward helical-like Majorana transport in systems without time-reversal symmetry, with direct implications for topological quantum computation.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (69)
- S. Frolov, M. Manfra, and J. Sau, Topological superconductivity in hybrid devices, Nat. Phys. 16, 718 (2020).
- M. Sato and Y. Ando, Topological superconductors: A review, Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 076501 (2017).
- D. Zhu, T. Jaako, Q. He, and P. Rabl, Quantum computing with superconducting circuits in the picosecond regime, Phys. Rev. Appl. 16, 014024 (2021).
- D. A. Ivanov, Non-Abelian statistics of half-quantum vortices in -wave superconductors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 268 (2001).
- N. Read and D. Green, Paired states of fermions in two dimensions with breaking of parity and time-reversal symmetries and the fractional quantum Hall effect, Phys. Rev. B 61, 10267 (2000).
- A. Y. Kitaev, Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires, Phys. Usp. 44, 131 (2001).
- J. Alicea, New directions in the pursuit of Majorana fermions in solid state systems, Rep. Prog. Phys. 75, 076501 (2012).
- C. W. Beenakker, Search for Majorana fermions in superconductors, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 4, 113 (2013).
- Y. Han, Y. Yang, J. Cui, and R. Zhao, The impact of single-photon loss on symmetry breaking quantum error correction, Phys. Scr. 100, 055101 (2025).
- E. Prada, P. San-Jose, M. W. A. de Moor, A. Geresdi, E. J. H. Lee, J. Klinovaja, D. Loss, J. Nygård, R. Aguado, and L. P. Kouwenhoven, From Andreev to Majorana bound states in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowires, Nat. Rev. Phys. 2, 575 (2020).
- S. Deng, L. Viola, and G. Ortiz, Majorana modes in time-reversal invariant -wave topological superconductors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 036803 (2012).
- R.-X. Zhang, W. S. Cole, and S. Das Sarma, Helical hinge Majorana modes in iron-based superconductors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 187001 (2019).
- J. Wang and B. Lian, Multiple chiral Majorana fermion modes and quantum transport, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 256801 (2018).
- Z.-X. Li, C. Chan, and H. Yao, Realizing Majorana zero modes by proximity effect between topological insulators and -wave high-temperature superconductors, Phys. Rev. B 91, 235143 (2015).
- P. Zareapour, A. Hayat, S. Y. Yang, D. Zhao, M. Kreshchuk, N. Jain, Z. Xu, G. Yang, G. Gu, X. Jia, L. Kisslinger, L. Krusin-Elbaum, A. Tsvelik, T. Valla, M. M. Qazilbash, D. N. Basov, L. H. Greene, S. Krishnamoorthy, Y. Kedem, Y. Lubashevsky, et al., Proximity-induced high-temperature superconductivity in the topological insulators and , Nat. Commun. 3, 1056 (2012).
- M.-X. Wang, C. Liu, J.-P. Xu, F. Yang, L. Miao, M.-Y. Yao, C. L. Gao, C. Shen, X. Ma, X. Chen, et al., The coexistence of superconductivity and topological order in the thin films, Science 336, 52 (2012).
- H. Zhao, B. Rachmilowitz, Z. Ren, R. Han, J. Schneeloch, R. Zhong, G. Gu, Z. Wang, and I. Zeljković, Superconducting proximity effect in a topological insulator using Fe(Te,Se), Phys. Rev. B 97, 224504 (2018).
- L. Fu and C. L. Kane, Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 096407 (2008).
- R. M. Lutchyn, J. D. Sau, and S. Das Sarma, Majorana fermions and a topological phase transition in semiconductor–superconductor heterostructures, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 077001 (2010).
- Y. Oreg, G. Refael, and F. von Oppen, Helical liquids and Majorana bound states in quantum wires, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 177002 (2010).
- X.-L. Qi, T. L. Hughes, and S.-C. Zhang, Chiral topological superconductor from the quantum Hall state, Phys. Rev. B 82, 184516 (2010).
- H. Zhang, Y. Xu, J. Wang, K. Chang, and S.-C. Zhang, Quantum spin Hall and quantum anomalous Hall states realized in junction quantum wells, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 216803 (2014).
- S. Hart, H. Ren, T. Wagner, P. Leubner, M. Mühlbauer, C. Brüne, H. Buhmann, L. W. Molenkamp, and A. Yacoby, Induced superconductivity in the quantum spin Hall edge, Nat. Phys. 10, 638 (2014).
- V. S. Pribiag, A. J. A. Beukman, F. Qu, M. C. Cassidy, C. Charpentier, W. Wegscheider, and L. P. Kouwenhoven, Edge-mode superconductivity in a two-dimensional topological insulator, Nat. Nanotechnol. 10, 593 (2015).
- Q. L. He, L. Pan, A. L. Stern, E. C. Burks, X. Che, G. Yin, J. Wang, B. Lian, Q. Zhou, E. S. Choi, K. Murata, X. Kou, Z. Chen, T. Nie, Q. Shao, Y. Fan, S.-C. Zhang, J. Xia, and K. L. Wang, Chiral Majorana fermion modes in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator-superconductor structure, Science 357, 294 (2017), retracted.
- M. Kayyalha, D. Xiao, R. Zhang, Y. Shin, J. Jiang, K. M. Fijalkowski, S. Mandal, M. Winnerlein, C. Gould, K. Brunner, S. Grauer, J. Liao, F. Schuba, S. Mühlbauer, I. Siddiqi, G. Bauer, F. Amet, L. W. Molenkamp, C.-Z. Li, J. Wang, et al., Absence of evidence for chiral Majorana modes in quantum anomalous Hall–Superconductor structures, Science 367, 64 (2020).
- Y. Huang, F. Setiawan, and J. D. Sau, Disorder-induced half-integer quantized conductance plateau in quantum anomalous Hall insulator-superconductor structures, Phys. Rev. B 97, 100501(R) (2018).
- W. Ji and X.-G. Wen, conductance plateau without 1D chiral Majorana fermions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 107002 (2018).
- B. Lian, X.-Q. Sun, A. Vaezi, X.-L. Qi, and S.-C. Zhang, Topological quantum computation based on chiral Majorana fermions, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115, 10938 (2018).
- S. A. Sumner, J. Lyu, J. Z. Gao, Y.-M. Xie, C.-Z. Chen, C.-W. Cho, O. Atanov, Z. Chen, K. Liu, Y. J. Hu, K. Y. Yip, S. K. Goh, Q. L. He, L. Pan, K. L. Wang, K. T. Law, and R. Lortz, Spectroscopic fingerprint of chiral Majorana modes at the edge of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator/superconductor heterostructure, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 16267 (2020).
- M. Banerjee, M. Heiblum, V. Umansky, D. E. Feldman, Y. Oreg, and A. Stern, Observation of half-integer thermal Hall conductance, Nature (London) 559, 205 (2018).
- T. Yokoi, S. Ma, Y. Kasahara, S. Kasahara, T. Shibauchi, H. Tanaka, N. Kurita, J. Nasu, Y. Motome, C. Hickey, S. Trebst, and Y. Matsuda, Half-integer quantized anomalous thermal Hall effect in the Kitaev material , Science 373, 568 (2021).
- S. H. Simon, Interpretation of thermal conductance of the edge, Phys. Rev. B 97, 121406(R) (2018).
- A. Topp, R. Queiroz, A. Grüneis, L. Müchler, A. W. Rost, A. Varykhalov, D. Marchenko, M. Krivenkov, F. Rodolakis, J. L. McChesney, B. V. Lotsch, L. M. Schoop, and C. R. Ast, Surface floating 2D bands in layered nonsymmorphic semimetals: Zrsis and related compounds, Phys. Rev. X 7, 041073 (2017).
- Z. Zhu, T.-R. Chang, C.-Y. Huang, H. Pan, X.-A. Nie, X.-Z. Wang, Z.-T. Jin, S.-Y. Xu, S.-M. Huang, D.-D. Guan, S. Wang, Y.-Y. Li, C. Liu, D. Qian, W. Ku, F. Song, H. Lin, H. Zheng, and J.-F. Jia, Quasiparticle interference and nonsymmorphic effect on a floating band surface state of ZrSiSe, Nat. Commun. 9, 4153 (2018).
- S. Ma, Y. Ma, W. Gao, H. Yu, Q. Cheng, and T. J. Cui, Asymmetric frequency multiplexing topological devices based on a floating edge band, Photon. Res. 12, 1201 (2024).
- Y.-Y. Li and S.-B. Zhang, Floating edge bands in the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model with altermagnetism, Phys. Rev. B 111, 045106 (2025).
- L. Šmejkal, J. Sinova, and T. Jungwirth, Emerging research landscape of altermagnetism, Phys. Rev. X 12, 040501 (2022).
- J. Krempaský, L. Šmejkal, et al., Altermagnetic lifting of Kramers spin degeneracy, Nature (London) 626, 517 (2024).
- S. Lee, S. Lee, S. Jung, J. Jung, D. Kim, Y. Lee, B. Seok, J. Kim, B. G. Park, L. Smejkal, C. J. Kang, and C. Kim, Broken Kramers degeneracy in altermagnetic MnTe, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 036702 (2024).
- A. Altland, P. W. Brouwer, J. Dieplinger, M. S. Foster, M. Moreno-Gonzalez, and L. Trifunovic, Fragility of surface states in non-Wigner-Dyson topological insulators, Phys. Rev. X 14, 011057 (2024).
- D. Nakamura, K. Shiozaki, K. Shimomura, M. Sato, and K. Kawabata, Non-Hermitian origin of detachable boundary states in topological insulators, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 096601 (2025).
- W.-J. Yang, Z.-Z. Yang, X.-Y. Zou, and J.-C. Cheng, Characterization and experimental demonstration of corner states of boundary-obstructed topological insulators in a honeycomb lattice, Phys. Rev. B 107, 174101 (2023).
- L. Wang, Y. Jiang, J. Liu, S. Zhang, J. Li, P. Liu, Y. Sun, H. Weng, and X.-Q. Chen, Two-dimensional obstructed atomic insulators with fractional corner charge in the family, Phys. Rev. B 106, 155144 (2022).
- J. Wang, Q. Zhou, B. Lian, and S.-C. Zhang, Chiral topological superconductor and half-integer conductance plateau from quantum anomalous Hall plateau transition, Phys. Rev. B 92, 064520 (2015).
- Y.-T. Zhang, Z. Hou, X. C. Xie, and Q.-F. Sun, Quantum perfect crossed Andreev reflection in top-gated quantum anomalous Hall insulator–superconductor junctions, Phys. Rev. B 95, 245433 (2017).
- Y.-H. Li, J. Liu, H. Liu, H. Jiang, Q.-F. Sun, and X. C. Xie, Noise signatures for determining chiral Majorana fermion modes, Phys. Rev. B 98, 045141 (2018).
- X.-L. Qi and S.-C. Zhang, Topological insulators and superconductors, Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 1057 (2011).
- Q. Yan, H. Li, J. Zeng, Q.-F. Sun, and X. Xie, A Majorana perspective on understanding and identifying axion insulators, Commun. Phys. 4, 239 (2021).
- J. K. Asbóth, L. Oroszlány, and A. Pályi, A Short Course on Topological Insulators (Springer, New York, 2016), Vol. 919.
- Q. Yan, Y.-F. Zhou, and Q.-F. Sun, Electrically tunable chiral Majorana edge modes in quantum anomalous Hall insulator–topological superconductor systems, Phys. Rev. B 100, 235407 (2019).
- Y.-H. Wan and Q.-F. Sun, Magnetization-induced phase transitions on the surface of three-dimensional topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 109, 045418 (2024).
- Y.-H. Wan and Q.-F. Sun, Altermagnetism-induced parity anomaly in weak topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 111, 045407 (2025).
- H. Li, H. Jiang, Q.-F. Sun, and X. Xie, Emergent energy dissipation in quantum limit, Sci. Bull. 69, 1221 (2024).
- Y.-H. Wan, P.-Y. Liu, and Q.-F. Sun, Quantum anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnetic metals, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 186302 (2025).
- N.-X. Yang, Q. Yan, and Q.-F. Sun, Half-integer quantized thermal conductance plateau in chiral topological superconductor systems, Phys. Rev. B 105, 125414 (2022).
- T. Kawarabayashi, Y. Hatsugai, and H. Aoki, Quantum Hall plateau transition in graphene with spatially correlated random hopping, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 156804 (2009).
- S. G. Cheng, H. Zhang, and Q. F. Sun, Effect of electron-hole inhomogeneity on specular Andreev reflection and Andreev retroreflection in a graphene-superconductor hybrid system, Phys. Rev. B 83, 235403 (2011).
- N.-X. Yang, Y.-F. Zhou, P. Lv, and Q.-F. Sun, Gate voltage controlled thermoelectric figure of merit in three-dimensional topological insulator nanowires, Phys. Rev. B 97, 235435 (2018).
- Y.-H. Wan, P.-Y. Liu, and Q.-F. Sun, Classification of Chern numbers based on high-symmetry points, Phys. Rev. B 111, L161410 (2025).
- Y.-H. Wan, P.-Y. Liu, and Q.-F. Sun, Interplay of altermagnetic order and Wilson mass in the Dirac equation: Helical edge states without time-reversal symmetry, Phys. Rev. B 112, 115412 (2025).
- C.-Z. Chang, J. Zhang, X. Feng, J. Shen, Z. Zhang, M. Guo, K. Li, Y. Ou, P. Wei, L.-L. Wang, Z.-Q. Ji, Y. Feng, S. Ji, X. Chen, J. Jia, X. Dai, Z. Fang, S.-C. Zhang, K. He, Y. Wang, et al., Experimental observation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect in a magnetic topological insulator, Science 340, 167 (2013).
- Y. Deng, Y. Yu, M. Z. Shi, Z. Guo, Z. Xu, J. Wang, X. H. Chen, and Y. Zhang, Quantum anomalous Hall effect in intrinsic magnetic topological insulator , Science 367, 895 (2020).
- A. Uday, G. Lippertz, K. Moors, H. F. Legg, R. Joris, A. Bliesener, L. M. Pereira, A. Taskin, and Y. Ando, Induced superconducting correlations in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator, Nat. Phys. 20, 1589 (2024).
- A. M. Black-Schaffer and A. V. Balatsky, Proximity-induced unconventional superconductivity in topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 87, 220506(R) (2013).
- W.-J. Li, S.-P. Chao, and T.-K. Lee, Theoretical study of large proximity-induced -wave-like pairing from a -wave superconductor, Phys. Rev. B 93, 035140 (2016).
- K. Shiozaki, D. Nakamura, K. Shimomura, M. Sato, and K. Kawabata, -theory classification of Wannier localizability and detachable topological boundary states, Phys. Rev. B 112, 075152 (2025).
- S. Ryu, A. P. Schnyder, A. Furusaki, and A. W. Ludwig, Topological insulators and superconductors: Tenfold way and dimensional hierarchy, New J. Phys. 12, 065010 (2010).
- X.-L. Qi, T. L. Hughes, S. Raghu, and S.-C. Zhang, Time-reversal-invariant topological superconductors and superfluids in two and three dimensions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 187001 (2009).