Gate defined wires in HgTe quantum wells: from Majorana fermions to spintronics

Abstract

We introduce a promising new platform for Majorana zero-modes and various spintronics applications based on gate-defined wires in HgTe quantum wells. Due to the Dirac-like band structure for HgTe the physics of such systems differs markedly from that of conventional quantum wires. Most strikingly, we show that the subband parameters for gate-defined HgTe wires exhibit exquisite tunability: modest gate voltage variation allows one to modulate the Rashba spin-orbit energies from zero up to ~30K, and the effective g-factors from zero up to giant values exceeding 600. The large achievable spin-orbit coupling and g-factors together allow one to access Majorana modes in this setting at exceptionally low magnetic fields while maintaining robustness against disorder. As an additional benefit, gate-defined wires (in HgTe or other settings) should greatly facilitate the fabrication of networks for refined transport experiments used to detect Majoranas, as well as the realization of non-Abelian statistics and quantum information devices.

19 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (25)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• 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
• A single-atom electron spin qubit in silicon
• The Quantum Spin Hall Effect: Theory and Experiment
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect in Inverted Type II Semiconductors
• Anomalous modulation of a zero bias peak in a hybrid nanowire-superconductor device
• Non-Abelian Topological Order in S-Wave Superfluids of Ultracold Fermionic Atoms
• Majorana Fermions in Semiconductor Nanowires: Fundamentals, Modeling, and Experiment
• $p_x+i{p}_y$ superfluid from s-wave interactions of fermionic cold atoms
• Transport spectroscopy of NS nanowire junctions with Majorana fermions
• Multichannel Generalization of Kitaev's Majorana End States and a Practical Route to Realize Them in Thin Films
• Observing Majorana Bound States in p-wave Superconductors Using Noise Measurements in Tunneling Experiments
• Search for Majorana fermions in multiband semiconducting nanowires
• Engineering a p+ip Superconductor: Comparison of Topological Insulator and Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Materials
• Majorana End-States in Multi-band Microstructures with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Diamagnetism in disordered graphene
• Tunable g factor and phonon-mediated hole spin relaxation in Ge/Si nanowire quantum dots
• 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 (17)

• A facility to Search for Hidden Particles at the CERN SPS: the SHiP physics case
• Topological Phases in InAs${}_{1-x}$Sb${}_x$: From Novel Topological Semimetal to Majorana Wire
• Detecting Majoranas in 1D wires by charge sensing
• Classification of engineered topological superconductors
• Superconducting diode effect in quasi-one-dimensional systems
• Electron transport in multiterminal networks of Majorana bound states
• Phase-induced topological superconductivity in a planar heterostructure
• Optimizing spin-orbit splittings in InSb Majorana nanowires
• One-dimensional topological superconductivity based entirely on phase control
• Tunnel conductance spectroscopy via harmonic generation in a hybrid capacitor device
• Proximity Induced Superconductivity in CdTe-HgTe Core-Shell Nanowires
• Stability and accuracy control of $\mathbf{k}\cdot \mathbf{p}$ parameters
• Fraunhofer pattern in the presence of Majorana zero modes
• Transport signatures of a quantum spin Hall - chiral topological superconductor junction
• Bulk transport through superconducting hybrid structures in HgTe quantum wells
• Josephson junction arrays as a platform for topological phases of matter
• Confinement-induced Majorana modes in a nodal topological superconductor