2011/11/30 by Jay D. Sau, S. Das Sarma · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.supr-con #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms1966
published as Nature Communications 3, Article number: 964 (2012) · 8 pages; 3 figures; version 2: Supplementary material updated to include more general proof for localized Majorana fermions
arxiv created 2011/11/30 · arxiv updated 2012/07/19
Semiconducting nanowires in proximity to superconductors are promising experimental systems for Majorana fermions, which may ultimately be used as building blocks for topological quantum computers. A serious challenge in the experimental realization of the Majorana fermions is the supression of topological superconductivity by disorder. We show that Majorana fermions protected by a robust topological gap can occur at the ends of a chain of quantum dots connected by s-wave superconductors. In the appropriate parameter regime, we establish that the quantum dot/superconductor system is equivalent to a 1D Kitaev chain, which can be tuned to be in a robust topological phase with Majorana end modes even in the case where the quantum dots and superconductors are both strongly disordered. Such a spin-orbit coupled quantum dot - s-wave superconductor array provides an ideal experimental platform for the observation of non-Abelian Majorana modes.