Substrate-induced Majorana renormalization in topological nanowires

Abstract

We theoretically consider the substrate-induced Majorana localization length renormalization in nanowires in contact with a bulk superconductor in the strong tunnel-coupled regime, showing explicitly that this renormalization depends strongly on the transverse size of the one-dimensional nanowires. For metallic (e.g. Fe on Pb) or semiconducting (e.g. InSb on Nb) nanowires, the renormalization effect is found to be very strong and weak respectively because the transverse confinement size in the two situations happens to be 0.5nm (metallic nanowire) and 20nm (semiconducting nanowire). Thus, the Majorana localization length could be very short (long) for metallic (semiconducting) nanowires even for the same values of all other parameters (except for the transverse wire size). We also show that any tunneling conductance measurements in such nanowires, carried out at temperatures and/or energy resolutions comparable to the induced superconducting energy gap, cannot distinguish between the existence of the Majorana modes or ordinary subgap fermionic states since both produce very similar broad and weak peaks in the subgap tunneling conductance independent of the localization length involved. Only low temperature (and high resolution) tunneling measurements manifesting sharp zero bias peaks can be considered to be signatures of Majorana modes in topological nanowires.

arXiv comment17 pages, 3 figures; included in special issue "Focus on Topological Physics: From Condensed Matter to Cold Atoms and Optics"

References in corpus (48)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• 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
• Evidence of Majorana fermions in an Al - InAs nanowire topological superconductor
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in Ferromagnetic Atomic Chains on a Superconductor
• A generic new platform for topological quantum computation using semiconductor heterostructures
• 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
• Majorana Zero Modes and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconductor-Nanowire Devices from Tunneling to the Multichannel Regime: Zero-Bias Oscillations and Magnetoconductance Crossover
• Anomalous modulation of a zero bias peak in a hybrid nanowire-superconductor device
• Majorana fermions in chains of magnetic atoms on a superconductor
• Topological superconducting phase in helical Shiba chains
• Non-Abelian quantum order in spin-orbit-coupled semiconductors: The search for topological Majorana particles in solid state systems
• Majorana fermions emerging from magnetic nanoparticles on a superconductor without spin-orbit coupling
• A Majorana smoking gun for the superconductor-semiconductor hybrid topological system
• Zero-voltage conductance peak from weak antilocalization in a Majorana nanowire
• Midgap edge states and pairing symmetry of quasi-one-dimensional organic superconductors
• Class D spectral peak in Majorana quantum wires
• Search for Majorana fermions in multiband semiconducting nanowires
• How to realize a robust practical Majorana chain in a quantum dot-superconductor linear array
• Proximity effect at the superconductor - topological insulator interface
• Imaging Cooper Pairing of Heavy Fermions in CeCoIn5
• Visualizing Nodal Heavy Fermion Superconductivity in CeCoIn5
• Splitting of Majorana modes due to intervortex tunneling in a p + ip superconductor
• Robustness of Majorana fermions in 2D topological superconductors
• Topological Superconductivity induced by Ferromagnetic Metal Chains
• Strong localization of Majorana end states in chains of magnetic adatoms
• Andreev reflection from non-centrosymmetric superconductors and Majorana bound state generation in half-metallic ferromagnets
• Topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions in half-metal / superconductor heterostructure
• Topological Yu-Shiba-Rusinov chain from spin-orbit coupling
• Helical order in one-dimensional magnetic atom chains and possible emergence of Majorana bound states
• Majorana Fermions in Chiral Topological Ferromagnetic Nanowires
• Correlations between Majorana fermions through a superconductor
• Evidence from Tunneling Spectroscopy for a Quasi-One Dimensional Origin of Superconductivity in Sr2RuO4
• Majorana fermions in ferromagnetic chains on the surface of bulk spin-orbit coupled $s$-wave superconductors
• Interplay of topological phases in magnetic adatom-chains on top of a Rashba superconducting surface
• Stable topological phases in a family of two-dimensional fermion models
• Paramagnetic instability at normal-metal - superconductor interfaces
• Bound states of a ferromagnetic wire in a superconductor
• Universal spin-triplet superconducting correlations of Majorana fermions
• Microscopic theory for a ferromagnetic-nanowire/superconductor heterostructure: Transport, fluctuations and topological superconductivity
• K-pi interaction in finite volume and the K* resonance

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Effects of large induced superconducting gap on semiconductor Majorana nanowires
• How to infer non-Abelian statistics and topological invariants from tunneling conductance properties of realistic Majorana nanowires
• Proximity effect and Majorana bound states in clean semiconductor nanowires coupled to disordered superconductors
• Proximity-induced low-energy renormalization in hybrid semiconductor-superconductor Majorana structures
• Bulk disorder in the superconductor affects proximity-induced topological superconductivity
• Bound states of a ferromagnetic wire in a superconductor
• Atomic line defects and topological superconductivity in unconventional superconductors
• Anisotropic paramagnetic response of topological Majorana surface states in the superconductor ${\text{UTe}}_2$
• Renormalization effects in spin-polarized metallic wires proximitized by a superconductor: A scattering approach
• Electromagnetic absorption of quasi-1D Majorana nanowires
• Symmetry Reduction and Boundary Modes for Fe-Chains on an s-wave Superconductor