Interfaces of topological insulators and superconductors

At every interface with a superconductor, there is a probability that an incident electron is reflected as a spin-flipped hole, which is known as Andreev reflection. In certain geometries consisting of a topological insulator and an s-wave superconductor, Andreev reflection can lead to the formation of a Majorana bound state (MBS). Since a MBS obeys non-Abelian statistics, it can serve as a build- ing block for topological quantum bits in future devices. In this thesis, we investigate interfaces of topological insulators and superconductors, both theoretically and experimentally.