Emergence of Majorana modes in cylindrical nanowires

Abstract

We present calculations of Majorana edge modes in cylindrical nanowires of a semiconductor material with proximity-induced superconductivity. We consider a Rashba field along the transverse direction and an applied magnetic field in arbitrary orientation. Our analysis is based on exact numerical diagonalizations for the finite cylinder and on the complex band structure for the semi-infinite one. Orbital effects are responsible for a strong anisotropy of the critical field for which the effective gap vanishes. Robust Majorana modes are induced by the parallel field component and we find regimes with more than one Majorana mode on the same edge. Experimentally, they would manifest as a specific sequence of zero-bias conductances as a function of magnetic field. In the finite cylinder, a degradation of the Majorana modes due to interference of the two edges leads to oscillating non zero energies for large enough fields.

6 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Majorana bound states in semiconducting nanostructures
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• Tilting of the magnetic field in Majorana nanowires: critical angle and zero-energy differential conductance
• Robustness of Majorana bound states in the short junction limit
• Effects of tilting the magnetic field in 1D Majorana nanowires
• Majorana states in prismatic core-shell nanowires
• Majorana Bound States in Double Nanowires with Reduced Zeeman Thresholds due to Supercurrents
• Majorana fermions in finite-size strips with in-plane magnetic fields
• Magneto-conductance of topological junctions based on two-dimensional electron gases reveals Majorana phases
• Transverse profile and 3D spin canting of a Majorana state in carbon nanotubes
• Current distributions in stripe Majorana junctions
• Majorana Zero Modes in Cylindrical Semiconductor Quantum Wire
• Majorana modes in smooth normal-superconductor nanowire junctions
• Majorana mode stacking, robustness and size effect in cylindrical nanowires