Superconducting proximity effect in semiconductor nanowires

Abstract

We theoretically consider the proximity effect in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanostructures, which are being extensively studied in the context of the ongoing search for non-Abelian Majorana fermions in solid state systems. Specifically, we consider the dependence on the thickness of the semiconductor in the direction normal to the interface, a physical effect that has been uncritically neglected in all prior work on the subject. Quite surprisingly, we find the completely unanticipated result that increasing the semiconductor thickness leads to a drastic suppression of the induced superconducting gap due to proximity-induced interband coupling. As a result, in the limit of strong semiconductor-superconductor coupling, the proximity-induced gap becomes much smaller than the bulk superconductor gap and depends weakly on the interface transparency.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Evidence of Majorana fermions in an Al - InAs nanowire topological superconductor
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in a Nb-InSb Nanowire-Nb Hybrid Quantum Device
• Introduction to topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions
• Anomalous modulation of a zero bias peak in a hybrid nanowire-superconductor device
• Non-Abelian quantum order in spin-orbit-coupled semiconductors: The search for topological Majorana particles in solid state systems
• Majorana Fermions in Semiconductor Nanowires: Fundamentals, Modeling, and Experiment
• Multichannel Generalization of Kitaev's Majorana End States and a Practical Route to Realize Them in Thin Films
• A Majorana smoking gun for the superconductor-semiconductor hybrid topological system
• Engineering a p+ip Superconductor: Comparison of Topological Insulator and Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Materials
• Zero bias conductance peak in Majorana wires made of semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures
• To close or not to close: the fate of the superconducting gap across the topological quantum phase transition in Majorana-carrying semiconductor nanowires

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Epitaxy of Semiconductor-Superconductor nanowires
• Local electrical tuning of the nonlocal signals in a Cooper pair splitter
• Non-locality of zero-bias anomalies in the topologically-trivial phase of Majorana wires
• Numerical study of PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowires for engineering Majorana zero modes
• In Situ Epitaxy of Pure Phase Ultra-Thin InAs-Al Nanowires for Quantum Devices
• Soft superconducting gap in semiconductor-based Majorana nanowires
• Full proximity treatment of topological superconductors in Josephson-junction architectures
• Robustness of Topological Superconductivity in Proximity-Coupled Topological Insulator Nanoribbons
• Dispersive 1D Majorana modes with emergent supersymmetry in 1D proximitized superconductors via spatially-modulated potentials and magnetic fields
• Tip-induced Superconductivity
• Enhanced zero-bias conductance peak and splitting at mesoscopic interfaces between an $s$-wave superconductor and a 3D Dirac semimetal
• Majorana zero modes in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures: Defining topology in short and disordered nanowires through Majorana splitting