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  1. Abstract

    Chiral and helical Majorana fermions are two archetypal edge excitations in two-dimensional topological superconductors. They emerge from systems of different Altland–Zirnbauer symmetries and characterized byZandZ2topological invariants respectively. It seems improbable to tune a pair of co-propagating chiral edge modes to counter-propagate in a single system without symmetry breaking. Here, we explore the peculiar behaviors of Majorana edge modes in topological superconductors with an additional ‘mirror’ symmetry which changes the bulk topological invariant toZZtype. A theoretical toy model describing the proximity structure of a Chern insulator and apx-wave superconductor is proposed and solved analytically to illustrate a direct transition between two topologically nontrivial phases. The weak pairing phase has two chiral Majorana edge modes, while the strong pairing phase is characterized by mirror-graded Chern number and hosts a pair of counter-propagating Majorana fermions protected by the mirror symmetry. The edge theory is worked out in detail, and implications to braiding of Majorana fermions are discussed.

     
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  2. null (Ed.)