No Arabic abstract
Motivated by recent experiments, we investigate the excitation energy of a proximitized Rashba wire in the presence of a position dependent pairing. In particular, we focus on the spectroscopic pattern produced by the overlap between two Majorana bound states that appear for values of the Zeeman field smaller than the value necessary for reaching the bulk topological superconducting phase. The two Majorana bound states can arise because locally the wire is in the topological regime. We find three parameter ranges with different spectral properties: crossings, anticrossings and asymptotic reduction of the energy as a function of the applied Zeeman field. Interestingly, all these cases have already been observed experimentally. Moreover, since an increment of the magnetic field implies the increase of the distance between the Majorana bound states, the amplitude of the energy oscillations, when present, gets reduced. The existence of the different Majorana scenarios crucially relies on the fact that the two Majorana bound states have distinct $k$-space structures. We develop analytical models that clearly explain the microscopic origin of the predicted behavior.
We have observed millisecond-long coherent evolution of nuclear spins in a quantum wire at 1.2 K. Local, all-electrical manipulation of nuclear spins is achieved by dynamic nuclear polarization in the breakdown regime of the Integer Quantum Hall Effect combined with pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. The excitation thresholds for the breakdown are significantly smaller than what would be expected for our sample and the direction of the nuclear polarization can be controlled by the voltage bias. As a four-level spin system, the device is equivalent to two qubits.
We study Majorana zero modes properties in cylindrical cross-section semiconductor quantum wires based on the $k cdot p$ theory and a discretized lattice model. Within this model, the influence of disorder potentials in the wire and amplitude and phase fluctuations of the superconducting order-parameter are discussed. We find that for typical wire geometries, pairing potentials, and spin-orbit coupling strengths, coupling between quasi-one-dimensional sub-bands is weak, low-energy quasiparticles near the Fermi energy are nearly completely spin-polarized, and the number of electrons in the active sub-bands of topological states is small.
One-dimensional lattice with strong spin-orbit interactions (SOI) and Zeeman magnetic field is shown to lead to the formation of a helical charge-density wave (CDW) state near half-filling. Interplay of the magnetic field, SOI constants and the CDW gap seems to support Majorana bound states under appropriate value of the external parameters. Explicit calculation of the quasi-particles wave functions supports a formation of the localized zero-energy state, bounded to the sample end-points. Symmetry classification of the system is provided. Relative value of the density of states shows a precise zero-energy peak at the center of the band in the non-trivial topological regime.
Two majorana Fermions (MFs) localized at the two ends of the topological superconducting wire can interfere with each other and form the well known $4pi$ Josephson current. We reveal that the density of states (Dos) for the electron part and the hole part also follow a parity correlated $4pi$ period oscillation, while the Dos displays a $2pi$ period oscillation when two trivial states interfere with each other. Thus, the period of Dos oscillation can be used to distinguish the MFs from the trivial localized states. Interestingly, such phenomena can be directly observed in a short superconducting wire controlled by the gate voltage. This largely simplifies the experimental setup. We suggest that the interference effects can be detected through two STM leads or two norm leads.
An $N$-channel spinless p-wave superconducting wire is known to go through a series of $N$ topological phase transitions upon increasing the disorder strength. Here, we show that at each of those transitions the density of states shows a Dyson singularity $ u(varepsilon) propto varepsilon^{-1}|lnvarepsilon|^{-3} $, whereas $ u(varepsilon) propto varepsilon^{|alpha|-1}$ has a power-law singularity for small energies $varepsilon$ away from the critical points. Using the concept of superuniversality [Gruzberg, Read, and Vishveshwara, Phys. Rev. B 71, 245124 (2005)], we are able to relate the exponent $alpha$ to the wires transport properties at zero energy and, hence, to the mean free path $l$ and the superconducting coherence length $xi$.