Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures

Abstract

We propose and analyze theoretically an experimental setup for detecting the elusive Majorana particle in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. The experimental system consists of one-dimensional semiconductor wire with strong spin-orbit Rashba interaction embedded into a superconducting quantum interference device. We show that the energy spectra of the Andreev bound states at the junction are qualitatively different in topologically trivial (i.e., not containing any Majorana) and nontrivial phases having an even and odd number of crossings at zero energy, respectively. The measurement of the supercurrent through the junction allows one to discern topologically distinct phases and observe a topological phase transition by simply changing the in-plane magnetic field or the gate voltage. The observation of this phase transition will be a direct demonstration of the existence of Majorana particles.

4 pages, 3 figures, final version published in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (5)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Tunable Supercurrent Through Semiconductor Nanowires
• Supercurrent reversal in quantum dots
• Kinetics of non-equilibrium quasiparticle tunneling in superconducting charge qubits

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Topological Defects and Gapless Modes in Insulators and Superconductors
• Non-Abelian quantum order in spin-orbit-coupled semiconductors: The search for topological Majorana particles in solid state systems
• Interaction Effects in Topological Superconducting Wires Supporting Majorana Fermions
• Search for Majorana fermions in multiband semiconducting nanowires
• Engineering a p+ip Superconductor: Comparison of Topological Insulator and Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Materials
• Anyonic interferometry without anyons: How a flux qubit can read out a topological qubit
• Universal quantum computation on a semiconductor quantum wire network
• Tunneling of anyonic Majorana excitations in topological superconductors
• Flat band in the core of topological defects: bulk-vortex correspondence in topological superfluids with Fermi points
• Topologically non-trivial superconductivity in spin-orbit coupled systems: Bulk phases and quantum phase transitions
• Topological superfluid ${}^3$He-B: fermion zero modes on interfaces and in the vortex core
• Hybrid InAs nanowire-vanadium proximity SQUID
• Robustness of Majorana Modes and Minigaps in a Spin-Orbit-Coupled Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructure
• Exact solutions for a type of electron pairing model with spin-orbit interactions and Zeeman coupling
• Straining the Identity of Majorana Fermions