Majorana fermions in semiconductor nanowires

2011/06/30 by Tudor D. Stanescu, Tudor Stanescu, Roman M. Lutchyn +1 · 5 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Fermion #Graphene research and applications #MAJORANA #Nanowire #Physics #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Realization (probability) #Superconductivity #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.84.144522

published as Phys. Rev. B 84, 144522 (2011) · 29 pages, 30 figures

openalex publication_date 2011/10/28 · arxiv created 2011/11/16 · arxiv updated 2015/03/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study multiband semiconducting nanowires proximity coupled with an s-wave superconductor and calculate the topological phase diagram as a function of the chemical potential and magnetic field. The nontrivial topological state corresponds to a superconducting phase supporting an odd number of pairs of Majorana modes localized at the ends of the wire, whereas the nontopological state corresponds to a superconducting phase with no Majoranas or with an even number of pairs of Majorana modes. Our key finding is that multiband occupancy not only lifts the stringent constraint of one-dimensionality, but also allows having higher carrier density in the nanowire. Consequently, multiband nanowires are better suited for stabilizing the topological superconducting phase and for observing the Majorana physics. We present a detailed study of the parameter space for multiband semiconductor nanowires focusing on understanding the key experimental conditions required for the realization and detection of Majorana fermions in solid-state systems. We include various sources of disorder and characterize their effects on the stability of the topological phase. Finally, we calculate the local density of states as well as the differential tunneling conductance as functions of external parameters and predict the experimental signatures that would establish the existence of emergent Majorana zero-energy modes in solid-state systems.

Citations

• Localization in disordered superconducting wires with broken spin-rotation symmetry
• Search for Majorana Fermions in Multiband Semiconducting Nanowires
• Majorana fermions in a tunable semiconductor device
• Testable Signatures of Quantum Nonlocality in a Two-Dimensional Chiralp-Wave Superconductor
• Teoria simmetrica dell’elettrone e del positrone
• 2n-quasihole states realize 2n−1-dimensional spinor braiding statistics in paired quantum Hall states
• Proximity effect at the superconductor–topological insulator interface
• Topological Quantum Buses: Coherent Quantum Information Transfer between Topological and Conventional Qubits
• Helical Liquids and Majorana Bound States in Quantum Wires
• Supercurrent reversal in quantum dots
• Anyonic interferometry without anyons: how a flux qubit can read out a topological qubit
• Tunable Supercurrent Through Semiconductor Nanowires
• Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons
• Observing Majorana bound States inp-Wave Superconductors Using Noise Measurements in Tunneling Experiments
• Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation
• Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires
• Low-temperature proximity effect in clean metals with repulsive electron-electron interaction

Cited by

• Effect of disorder in non-uniform hybrid nanowires with Majorana and fermionic bound states
• Response to recent comments on Phys. Rev. B 107, 245423 (2023) and Subsection S4.3 of the Supp. Info. for Nature 638, 651-655 (2025)
• Shuttling Majorana zero modes in disordered and noisy topological superconductors
• Near-zero-energy end states in topologically trivial spin-orbit coupled superconducting nanowires with a smooth confinement
• Endstates in multichannel spinlessp-wave superconducting wires