Transport signatures of topological superconductivity in a proximity-coupled nanowire

Abstract

We study the conductance of a junction between the normal and superconducting segments of a nanowire, both of which are subjected to spin-orbit coupling and an external magnetic field. We directly compare the transport properties of the nanowire assuming two different models for the superconducting segment: one where we put superconductivity by hand into the wire, and one where superconductivity is induced through a tunneling junction with a bulk s-wave superconductor. While these two models are equivalent at low energies and at weak coupling between the nanowire and the superconductor, we show that there are several interesting qualitative differences away from these two limits. In particular, the tunneling model introduces an additional conductance peak at the energy corresponding to the bulk gap of the parent superconductor. By employing a combination of analytical methods at zero temperature and numerical methods at finite temperature, we show that the tunneling model of the proximity effect reproduces many more of the qualitative features that are seen experimentally in such a nanowire system.

16 pages, 13 figures

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• Metallization of Rashba wire by superconducting layer in the strong-proximity regime
• On controlling the bound states in quantum-dot hybrid-nanowire
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• Proximity-induced low-energy renormalization in hybrid semiconductor-superconductor Majorana structures
• Spin and Charge Signatures of Topological Superconductivity in Rashba Nanowires
• Finite-size effects in a nanowire strongly coupled to a thin superconducting shell
• Low-field Topological Threshold in Majorana Double Nanowires
• Boundary Green's function approach for spinful single-channel and multichannel Majorana nanowires
• Destructive interference of direct and crossed Andreev pairing in a system of two nanowires coupled via an s-wave superconductor
• DIII Topological Superconductivity with Emergent Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Proximity effect in a two-dimensional electron gas coupled to a thin superconducting layer
• Odd-frequency superconducting pairing in Kitaev-based junctions
• Majorana Bound States in Double Nanowires with Reduced Zeeman Thresholds due to Supercurrents
• Conductance feature smearing and anisotropic suppression of induced superconductivity in a Majorana nanowire
• Prevalence of trivial zero-energy sub-gap states in non-uniform helical spin chains on the surface of superconductors
• Majorana bound states in germanium Josephson junctions via phase control
• Metallization and proximity superconductivity in topological insulator nanowires
• Tunneling conductance in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures
• Microscopic analysis of proximity-induced superconductivity and metallization effects in superconductor-germanium hole nanowires
• Curvature of gap closing features and the extraction of Majorana nanowire parameters
• Do Majorana zero modes emerge in the hybrid nanowire under a strong magnetic field?
• Tunneling conductance in two-dimensional junctions between a normal metal and a ferromagnetic Rashba metal
• Interplay between superconductivity and spin-dependent fields in nanowire-based systems
• Unconventional gate voltage dependence of the charge conductance caused by spin-splitting Fermi surface by Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling
• Dressed Majorana fermion in a hybrid nanowire
• Theory of Tunneling Effect in 1D AIII-class Topological Insulator (Nanowire) Proximity Coupled with a Superconductor
• Non uniform superconductivity in wires with strong spin-orbit coupling
• Gradient expansion of the non-Abelian gauge-covariant Moyal star-product