Obtaining Majorana and other boundary modes from the metamorphosis of impurity-induced states: exact solutions via T-matrix

Abstract

We provide here a new and exact formalism to describe the formation of end, edge or surface states through the evolution of impurity-induced states. We propose a general algorithm that consists of finding the impurity states via the T-matrix formalism and showing that they evolve into boundary modes when the impurity potential goes to infinity. We apply this technique to obtain Majorana states in 1D and 2D systems described by the Kitaev model with point-like and respectively line-like impurities. We confirm our exact analytical results by a numerical tight-binding approach. We argue that our formalism can be applied to other topological models, as well as to any model exhibiting edge states.