Fermionic and Majorana Bound States in Hybrid Nanowires with Non-Uniform Spin-Orbit Interaction

Abstract

We study intragap bound states in the topological phase of a Rashba nanowire in the presence of a magnetic field and with non-uniform spin orbit interaction (SOI) and proximity-induced superconductivity gap. We show that fermionic bound states (FBS) can emerge inside the proximity gap. They are localized at the junction between two wire sections characterized by different directions of the SOI vectors, and they coexist with Majorana bound states (MBS) localized at the nanowire ends. The energy of the FBS is determined by the angle between the SOI vectors and the lengthscale over which the SOI changes compared to the Fermi wavelength and the localization length. We also consider double-junctions and show that the two emerging FBSs can hybridize and form a double quantum dot-like structure inside the gap. We find explicit analytical solutions of the bound states and their energies for certain parameter regimes such as weak and strong SOI. The analytical results are confirmed and complemented by an independent numerical tight-binding model approach. Such FBS can act as quasiparticle traps and thus can have implications for topological quantum computing schemes based on braiding MBSs.

References in corpus (32)

• 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
• Ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices: mimicking condensed matter physics and beyond
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in Ferromagnetic Atomic Chains on a 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
• Exotic non-Abelian anyons from conventional fractional quantum Hall states
• Towards a realistic transport modeling in a superconducting nanowire with Majorana fermions
• A Majorana smoking gun for the superconductor-semiconductor hybrid topological system
• Majorana qubit decoherence by quasiparticle poisoning
• Genons, twist defects, and projective non-Abelian braiding statistics
• Direct Measurement of the Spin-Orbit Interaction in a Two-Electron InAs Nanowire Quantum Dot
• Majorana edge states in interacting one-dimensional systems
• Fractionalizing Majorana fermions: non-abelian statistics on the edges of abelian quantum Hall states
• Superconducting Proximity Effect on the Edge of Fractional Topological Insulators
• Spin-selective Peierls transition in interacting one-dimensional conductors with spin-orbit interaction
• Number fluctuations of sparse quasiparticles in a superconductor
• Fractional topological superconductors with fractionalized Majorana fermions
• Transition from fractional to Majorana fermions in Rashba nanowires
• Majorana End-States in Multi-band Microstructures with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Fermion Fractionalization to Majorana Fermions in Dimerized Kitaev Superconductor
• Kramers Pairs of Majorana Fermions and Parafermions in Fractional Topological Insulators
• Giant spin orbit interaction due to rotating magnetic fields in graphene nanoribbons
• Mutation of Andreev into Majorana bound states in long NS and SNS junctions
• Majorana Fermions in Ge/Si Hole Nanowires
• Fibonacci Anyons From Abelian Bilayer Quantum Hall States
• Helical States in Curved Bilayer Graphene
• Fractional Fermions with Non-Abelian Statistics
• Quantum charge pumping through fractional Fermions in charge density modulated quantum wires and Rashba nanowires

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Local and non-local quantum transport due to Andreev bound states in finite Rashba nanowires with superconducting and normal sections
• Geometry controlled superconducting diode and anomalous Josephson effect triggered by the topological phase transition in curved proximitized nanowires
• Topological Phase Detection in Rashba Nanowires with a Quantum Dot
• Finite-size effects in a nanowire strongly coupled to a thin superconducting shell
• Numerical study of PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowires for engineering Majorana zero modes
• General framework for transport in spin-orbit-coupled superconducting heterostructures: Nonuniform spin-orbit coupling and spin-orbit-active interfaces
• Building topological quantum circuits: Majorana nanowire junctions
• Majorana quasiparticles of inhomogeneous Rashba chain
• Josephson transistor from the superconducting diode effect in domain wall and skyrmion magnetic racetracks
• Prevalence of trivial zero-energy sub-gap states in non-uniform helical spin chains on the surface of superconductors
• Levitons in helical liquids with Rashba spin-orbit coupling probed by a superconducting contact
• Theory of Unconventional Spin States in Surfaces with Non-Rashba Spin-Orbit Interaction
• Transport features of a topological superconducting nanowire with a quantum dot: conductance and noise
• Nonlocal thermoelectricity in quantum wires as a signature of Bogoliubov-Fermi points
• The Dirac paradox in 1+1 dimensions and its realization with spin-orbit coupled nanowires
• Electron transport in quantum channels with spin-orbit interaction: Effects of the sign of the Rashba coupling and applications to nanowires
• Effects of the Vertices on the Topological Bound States in a Quasicrystalline Topological Insulator
• Confinement versus interface bound states in spin-orbit coupled nanowires
• Enhanced Thermoelectricity in Nanowires with inhomogeneous Helical states
• Antichiral edge states and Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces in a two-dimensional proximity-induced superconductor