Ballistic superconductivity in semiconductor nanowires

Abstract

Semiconductor nanowires have opened new research avenues in quantum transport owing to their confined geometry and electrostatic tunability. They have offered an exceptional testbed for superconductivity, leading to the realization of hybrid systems combining the macroscopic quantum properties of superconductors with the possibility to control charges down to a single electron. These advances brought semiconductor nanowires to the forefront of efforts to realize topological superconductivity and Majorana modes. A prime challenge to benefit from the topological properties of Majoranas is to reduce the disorder in hybrid nanowire devices. Here, we show ballistic superconductivity in InSb semiconductor nanowires. Our structural and chemical analyses demonstrate a high-quality interface between the nanowire and a NbTiN superconductor which enables ballistic transport. This is manifested by a quantized conductance for normal carriers, a strongly enhanced conductance for Andreev-reflecting carriers, and an induced hard gap with a significantly reduced density of states. These results pave the way for disorder-free Majorana devices.

This submission contains the first part of arXiv:1603.04069. The second part of arXiv:1603.04069 is included in a separate paper

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Ballistic superconductivity in semiconductor nanowires
• Andreev rectifier: a nonlocal conductance signature of topological phase transitions
• Majorana splitting from critical currents in Josephson junctions
• On controlling the bound states in quantum-dot hybrid-nanowire
• Finite-size effects in a nanowire strongly coupled to a thin superconducting shell
• Majorana Kramers pairs in Rashba double nanowires with interactions and disorder
• Topological properties of chains of magnetic impurities on a superconducting substrate: Interplay between the Shiba band and ferromagnetic wire limits
• Josephson effect in multiterminal topological junctions
• Transport spectroscopy of induced superconductivity in the three-dimensional topological insulator HgTe
• DIII Topological Superconductivity with Emergent Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Building topological quantum circuits: Majorana nanowire junctions
• Nonequilibrium Andreev bound states population in short superconducting junctions coupled to a resonator