Robustness of Topological Order in Semiconductor-Superconductor Nanowires in the Coulomb Blockade Regime
arXiv:1303.2940 · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/8/085003
Abstract
Semiconductor-superconductor hybrid systems are promising candidates for the realization Majorana fermions and topological order, i.e. topologically protected degeneracies, in solid state devices. We show that the topological order is mirrored in the excitation spectra and can be observed in nonlinear Coulomb blockade transport through a ring-shaped nanowire. Especially, the excitation spectrum is almost independent of magnetic flux in the topologically trivial phase but acquires a characteristic magnetic flux periodicity in the nontrivial phase. The transition between the trivial and nontrivial phase is reflected in the closing and reopening of an excitation gap. We show that the signatures of topological order are robust against details of the geometry, electrostatic disorder, and the existence of additional subbands and only rely on the topology of the nanowire and the existence of a superconducting gap. Finally, we show that the coherence length in the nontrivial phase is much longer than in the trivial phase. This opens the possibility to coat the nanowire with superconducting nanograins and thereby significantly reduce the current due to cotunneling of Cooper pairs and to enhance the Coulomb charging energy without destroying the superconducting gap.
20 pages, 7 figures
References in corpus (57)
- Topological Insulators
- Topological insulators and superconductors
- Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
- Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires
- Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
- Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
- Paired states of fermions in two dimensions with breaking of parity and time-reversal symmetries, and the fractional quantum Hall effect
- Helical liquids and Majorana bound states in quantum wires
- New directions in the pursuit of Majorana fermions in solid state systems
- Topological entanglement entropy
- Evidence of Majorana fermions in an Al - InAs nanowire topological superconductor
- Detecting topological order in a ground state wave function
- A generic new platform for topological quantum computation using semiconductor heterostructures
- Search for Majorana fermions in superconductors
- Non-Abelian statistics and topological quantum information processing in 1D wire networks
- Observation of Majorana Fermions in a Nb-InSb Nanowire-Nb Hybrid Quantum Device
- Majorana fermions in a tunable semiconductor device
- Observation of the fractional ac Josephson effect: the signature of Majorana particles
- Josephson Current and Noise at a Superconductor-Quantum Spin Hall Insulator-Superconductor Junction
- Majorana Fermion Induced Resonant Andreev Reflection
- Introduction to topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions
- Electrically detected interferometry of Majorana fermions in a topological insulator
- Topological Phases of Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors: Edge States, Majorana Fermions, and the Non-Abelian Statistics
- Tunneling characteristic of a chain of Majorana bound states
- Non-Abelian quantum order in spin-orbit-coupled semiconductors: The search for topological Majorana particles in solid state systems
- Unconventional superconductivity on a topological insulator
- Spectroscopy of discrete energy levels in ultrasmall metallic grains
- Majorana Fermions in Semiconductor Nanowires
- Unconventional Josephson Effect in Hybrid Superconductor-Topological Insulator Devices
- Single particle Green's functions and interacting topological insulators
- Multichannel Generalization of Kitaev's Majorana End States and a Practical Route to Realize Them in Thin Films
- Quantized conductance at the Majorana phase transition in a disordered superconducting wire
- Detecting a Majorana-Fermion Zero Mode Using a Quantum Dot
- Topological invariants for spin-orbit coupled superconductor nanowires
- Majorana Fermions in Proximity-coupled Topological Insulator Nanowires
- Search for Majorana fermions in multiband semiconducting nanowires
- Quantum point contact as a probe of a topological superconductor
- Topological Order Parameters for Interacting Topological Insulators
- Griffiths effects and quantum critical points in dirty superconductors without spin-rotation invariance: One-dimensional examples
- Topological superconducting phases in disordered quantum wires with strong spin-orbit coupling
- Unconventional Josephson signatures of Majorana bound states
- Majorana bound states without vortices in topological superconductors with electrostatic defects
- Scheme to measure Majorana fermion lifetimes using a quantum dot
- Coulomb stability of the 4π-periodic Josephson effect of Majorana fermions
- Modulation of Majorana-Induced Current Cross-Correlations by Quantum Dots
- Exotic and excited-state radiative transitions in charmonium from lattice QCD
- Interacting topological phases in multiband nanowires
- Observing Majorana bound states of Josephson vortices in topological superconductors
- Fermion zero modes at the boundary of superfluid 3He-B
- Robustness of Majorana Fermion induced Fractional Josephson Effect
- Topological degeneracy of non-Abelian states for dummies
- Helical Dirac-Majorana interferometer in a superconductor-topological insulator sandwich structure
- Crossover from Majorana edge to end states in quasi-one-dimensional p-wave superconductors
- Probing a topological quantum critical point in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures
- Detecting Majorana Bound States by Nanomechanics
- Proposed Detection of the Topological Phase in Ring-Shaped Semiconductor-Superconductor Nanowires Using Coulomb Blockade Transport
- Coulomb Blockade of Proximity Effect at Large Conductance