Creation of Majorana Fermions in irradiated topological insulators

Topological insulators are a new class of materials, exhibiting a conducting surface on top of an otherwise insulating bulk. When a superconducting pairing is induced in their surface, so-called Majorana modes and bound states are predicted to appear. Majorana fermions are particles that are their own anti-particles and they are regarded as highly promising building blocks for a topological quantum computer. Many of the existing proposals for the realization and detection of these Majorana states rely additionally on the local creation of magnetic gaps in the surface spectrum, typically with the help of ferromagnetic insulators. This constitutes a possible weakness of the existing proposals since the use of these materials is an experimental challenge. Due to the exceptional electronic structure of topological insulators, off-resonant circularly polarized light can also serve to create an excitation gap in the electronic spectrum of the surface states. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate the suitability of this off-resonant radiation to replace the ferromagnetic insulators in the proposed setups for the creation of Majorana states. For the realization of this research project I can rely on my experience with topological insulators, Majorana fermions, and periodically time-dependent systems.