2011/11/23 by Jay D. Sau, Sumanta Tewari
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Carbon nanotube #Chiral anomaly #Chirality (physics) #Coupling (piping) #Fermion #Geometry #Graphene research and applications #MAJORANA #Materials science #Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model #Nanotechnology #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Spin (aerodynamics) #Superconductivity #Symmetry (geometry) #Symmetry protected topological order #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological degeneracy #Topological entropy in physics #Topological order #Topological quantum number #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.88.054503
published as Phys. Rev. B 88, 054503 (2013) · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2011/11/23 · openalex publication_date 2013/08/09 · arxiv updated 2013/08/14 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We show that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are good candidates for one-dimensional topological superconductivity with Majorana fermions (MFs) localized at the tube ends. Such states can potentially be useful for topological quantum computation using a nanotube network. The physics behind topological superconductivity in CNTs is novel and mediated by a recently reported curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling which itself has a topological origin. In addition to the spin-orbit coupling, an important new requirement for a robust topological state is broken chirality symmetry. We use topological arguments, calculations of the topological gap, and explicit numerical solutions of the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations to show that, for recently reported strengths of spin-orbit coupling and broken chirality symmetry, MFs and a robust topological gap \ensuremath∼500 mK are achievable in chiral carbon nanotubes.