Conductance behavior in nanowires with spin-orbit interaction -- A numerical study

Abstract

We consider electronic transport through semiconducting nanowires (W) with spin-orbit interaction (SOI), in a hybrid N-W-N setup where the wire is contacted by normal-metal leads (N). We investigate the conductance behavior of the system as a function of gate and bias voltage, magnetic field, wire length, temperature, and disorder. The transport calculations are performed numerically and are based on standard recursive Green's function techniques. In particular, we are interested in understanding if and how it is possible to deduce the strength of the SOI from the transport behavior. This is a very relevant question since so far no clear experimental observation in that direction has been produced. We find that the smoothness of the electrostatic potential profile between the contacts and the wire plays a crucial role, and we show that in realistic regimes the N-W-N setup may mask the effects of SOI, and a trivial behavior with apparent vanishing SOI is observed. We identify an optimal parameter regime, with neither too smooth nor too abrupt potentials, where the signature of SOI is best visible, with and without Fabry-Perot oscillations, and is most resilient to disorder and temperature effects.

9 pages, 10 figures, Published version (minor modifications)

References in corpus (13)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• 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
• Topological Phases of Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors: Edge States, Majorana Fermions, and the Non-Abelian Statistics
• Prospects for Spin-Based Quantum Computing
• Towards a realistic transport modeling in a superconducting nanowire with Majorana fermions
• Direct Measurement of the Spin-Orbit Interaction in a Two-Electron InAs Nanowire Quantum Dot
• Transition from fractional to Majorana fermions in Rashba nanowires
• Majorana End-States in Multi-band Microstructures with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Quantum charge pumping through fractional Fermions in charge density modulated quantum wires and Rashba nanowires
• Nuclear Spin Relaxation in Rashba Nanowires

Cited by in corpus (4)

• SNS junctions in nanowires with spin-orbit coupling: role of confinement and helicity on the sub-gap spectrum
• Quantized conductance and large g-factor anisotropy in InSb quantum point contacts
• Spin filtering in germanium/silicon core/shell nanowires with pseudo-helical gap
• Unconventional gate voltage dependence of the charge conductance caused by spin-splitting Fermi surface by Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling