Imaging phase winding in topological superconductors with a fork-tip Josephson STM
Abstract
The complex phase winding in a topological superconductor remains challenging to access by conventional real-space probes. We propose a scheme to probe this winding with a fork-tip Josephson STM near an impurity, where two superconducting tips form an interferometer sensitive to phase differences between two positions. The signal remains accessible even if the relative phase between the fork-tip and sample fluctuates, establishing a route towards a local phase-sensitive STM probe of topological superconductivity. We numerically compute the interference pattern to demonstrate that the magnitude and phase of the order parameter can be reconstructed as a function of angle, providing a route towards resolving the longstanding open experimental problem of directly detecting phase winding in topological superconductors.
Related
- Phase-Controlled Majorana Zero Modes in Altermagnetic Topological-Insulator Josephson Junctions
- Nonlocal Josephson diode effect in series-connected triplet p -wave superconductors
- Winding-Controlled Topological Descendants of Antialtermagnets
- Topological Winding Readout of an Emergent Page-Wootters Clock
- Topological Integer-Winding Dark Matter with a Dark Higgs Triplet: Stability from π2(SU(3)/SO(3)) = ℤ
BibTeX
@misc{poliakov2026imaging,
title = {{Imaging phase winding in topological superconductors with a fork-tip Josephson STM}},
author = {Vladislav Poliakov and Archisman Panigrahi},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.38174},
eprint = {2609.38174},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38174},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Imaging phase winding in topological superconductors with a fork-tip Josephson STM
AU - Vladislav Poliakov
AU - Archisman Panigrahi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.38174
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38174
AB - The complex phase winding in a topological superconductor remains challenging to access by conventional real-space probes. We propose a scheme to probe this winding with a fork-tip Josephson STM near an impurity, where two superconducting tips form an interferometer sensitive to phase differences between two positions. The signal remains accessible even if the relative phase between the fork-tip and sample fluctuates, establishing a route towards a local phase-sensitive STM probe of topological superconductivity. We numerically compute the interference pattern to demonstrate that the magnitude and phase of the order parameter can be reconstructed as a function of angle, providing a route towards resolving the longstanding open experimental problem of directly detecting phase winding in topological superconductors.
ER -