2011/12/30 by Jelena Klinovaja, Suhas Gangadharaiah, Daniel Loss · 3 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Bound state #Carbon nanotube #Condensed matter physics #Electric field #Electron #Fermion #Field (mathematics) #Graphene research and applications #MAJORANA #Magnetic field #Majorana fermion #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Quasiparticle #Superconductivity #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Wave function #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.108.196804
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 196804 (2012)
arxiv created 2011/12/30 · openalex publication_date 2012/05/08 · arxiv updated 2012/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider theoretically an armchair carbon nanotube (CNT) in the presence of an electric field and in contact with an s-wave superconductor. We show that the proximity effect opens up superconducting gaps in the CNT of different strengths for the exterior and interior branches of the two Dirac points. For strong proximity induced superconductivity the interior gap can be of the p-wave type, while the exterior gap can be tuned by the electric field to be of the s-wave type. Such a setup supports a single Majorana bound state at each end of the CNT. In the case of a weak proximity induced superconductivity, the gaps in both branches are of the p-wave type. However, the temperature can be chosen in such a way that the smallest gap is effectively closed. Using renormalization group techniques we show that the Majorana bound states exist even after taking into account electron-electron interactions.