Majorana quasi-particles from angular momentum conservation (Dr. F. Iemini)

Differently from typical scenarios, where such quasi-particles require the presence of superconductivity, we investigate orbital SU (2) × SU (2) Hubbard models in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. The latter reduces the global spin symmetry to an angular momentum parity symmetry, which provides an extremely robust protection mechanism that does not rely on any coupling to additional models. The emergence of Majorana edge modes is elucidated using field theory techniques, and corroborated with numerical simulations. Our results pave the way toward the observation of Majorana edge modes with Alkaline-earth-like fermions in optical lattices, where the basic ingredients for our recipe - spin-orbit coupling and strong inter-orbital interactions - have been observed over the last two years.