Invited Paper 2D+MI-ThM12
Imaging Superconducting Topological Surface States in Non-centrosymmetric PbTaSe₂

Thursday, November 2, 2017, 11:40 am, Room 15

The search for topological superconductors (TSCs) is one of the most exciting subjects in condensed matter physics. TSCs are characterized by a full superconducting gap in the bulk and topologically protected gapless surface (or edge) states. Within each vortex core of TSCs, there exist the zero energy Majorana bound states, which are predicted to exhibit non-Abelian statistics and to form the basis of the fault-tolerant quantum computation. So far, no stoichiometric bulk material exhibits the required topological surface states (TSSs) at E_F combined with fully gapped bulk superconductivity. Here, we use spectroscopic-imaging scanning tunneling microscopy to study the atomic and electronic structures of the non-centrosymmetric superconductor, PbTaSe2. Our results demonstrate PbTaSe2 as a promising candidate as a 2D TSC.