Supercurrent Detection of Topologically Trivial Zero-Energy States in Nanowire Junctions

2019/04/30 by Oladunjoye A. Awoga, Jorge Cayao, Annica M. Black‐Schaffer +1 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Energy (signal processing) #Josephson effect #Materials science #Nanowire #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Superconductivity #Supercurrent #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Zero (linguistics) #Zero-point energy #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.117001

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 117001 (2019) · 7 pages, 4 figures + 10 pages supplemental material, 14 figures. Published version

openalex publication_date 2019/09/12 · arxiv created 2019/09/13 · arxiv updated 2019/09/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We report the emergence of zero-energy states in the trivial phase of a short nanowire junction with a strong spin-orbit coupling and magnetic field, formed by strong coupling between the nanowire and two superconductors. The zero-energy states appear in the junction when the superconductors induce a large energy shift in the nanowire, such that the junction naturally forms a quantum dot, a process that is highly tunable by the superconductor width. Most importantly, we demonstrate that the zero-energy states produce a π shift in the phase-biased supercurrent, which can be used as a simple tool for their unambiguous detection, ruling out any Majorana-like interpretation.

Citations

• Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
• Majorana fermions in a tunable semiconductor device
• Helical Liquids and Majorana Bound States in Quantum Wires
• Proximity effects in superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures
• Superconductor-nanowire devices from tunneling to the multichannel regime: Zero-bias oscillations and magnetoconductance crossover
• Anomalous Zero-Bias Conductance Peak in a Nb–InSb Nanowire–Nb Hybrid Device
• Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation
• Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires
• Andreev bound states versus Majorana bound states in quantum dot-nanowire-superconductor hybrid structures: Trivial versus topological zero-bias conductance peaks
• Supercurrent Interference in Few-Mode Nanowire Josephson Junctions
• Decaying spectral oscillations in a Majorana wire with finite coherence length

Cited by

• Limits of thermal conductance quantization in chiral topological Josephson junctions
• Topologically nontrivial Andreev bound states
• Pinning of Andreev bound states to zero energy in two-dimensional superconductor- semiconductor Rashba heterostructures
• Formation and detection of Majorana modes in quantum spin Hall trenches
• Flux-induced topological superconductor in planar Josephson junction