Quantizing Majorana fermions in a superconductor

Abstract

A Dirac-type matrix equation governs surface excitations in a topological insulator in contact with an s-wave superconductor. The order parameter can be homogenous or vortex valued. In the homogenous case a winding number can be defined whose nonvanishing value signals topological effects. A vortex leads to a static, isolated, zero-energy solution. Its mode function is real and has been called “Majorana.” Here we demonstrate that the reality/Majorana feature is not confined to the zero-energy mode but characterizes the full quantum field. In a four-component description a change in basis for the relevant matrices renders the Hamiltonian imaginary and the full, space-time-dependent field is real, as is the case for the relativistic Majorana equation in the Majorana matrix representation. More broadly, we show that the Majorana quantization procedure is generic to superconductors, with or without the Dirac structure, and follows from the constraints of fermionic statistics on the symmetries of Bogoliubov-de Gennes Hamiltonians. The Hamiltonian can always be brought to an imaginary form, leading to equations of motion that are real with quantized real-field solutions. Also we examine the Fock space realization of the zero-mode algebra for the Dirac-type systems. We show that a two-dimensional representation is natural, in which fermion parity is preserved.