A proposal for realizing Majorana fermions without external magnetic field in strongly correlated nanowires

Abstract

We show that one dimensional (1D) topological superconductivity can be placed in the context of phenomena associated with strongly correlated electron systems. Here we propose a system consisting of a one-dimensional chain of strongly correlated fermions placed on a superconducting (SC) substrate that exhibits a spin-singlet extended $s$-wave pairing. Strong electron correlation is shown to transform an extended $s$-wave SC into a topological SC that hosts Majorana fermions. In contrast to the approaches based on mean-field treatments, no Zeeman or exchange magnetic field is needed to produce such an effect.