Designing Nanomagnet Arrays for Topological Nanowires in Si

Abstract

Recent interest in topological quantum computing has driven research into topological nanowires, one-dimensional quantum wires that support topological modes including Majorana fermions. Most topological nanowire designs rely on materials with strong spin-orbit coupling, such as InAs or InSb, used in combination with superconductors. It would be advantageous to fabricate topological nanowires using Si owing to its mature technology. However, the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in Si is weak. One approach that could circumvent this material deficiency is to rotate the electron spins using nanomagnets. Here, we perform detailed simulations of realistic Si/SiGe systems with an artificial spin-orbit gap induced by a nanomagnet array. Most of our results are also generalizable to other nanomagnet-based topological nanowire designs. By studying several concrete examples, we gain insight into the effects of nanomagnet arrays, leading to design rules and guidelines. Finally, we present an experimentally realizable design using magnets with a single polarization.

References in corpus (17)

• Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• 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 a Nb-InSb Nanowire-Nb Hybrid Quantum Device
• Kwant: a software package for quantum transport
• Observation of the fractional ac Josephson effect: the signature of Majorana particles
• 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
• Observation of a One-Dimensional Spin-Orbit Gap in a Quantum Wire
• Spin-selective Peierls transition in interacting one-dimensional conductors with spin-orbit interaction
• Majorana fermions in superconducting nanowires without spin-orbit coupling
• Transition from fractional to Majorana fermions in Rashba nanowires
• Conductance through a helical state in an InSb nanowire
• Investigation of Mobility Limiting Mechanisms in Undoped Si/SiGe Heterostructures
• Controlling Majorana states in topologically inhomogeneous superconductors
• Majorana states and devices in magnetic structures

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Spin Cross-Correlation Experiments in an Electron Entangler
• Helical Liquids in Semiconductors
• Emergent axion response in multilayered metamaterials
• Topologically nontrivial Andreev bound states
• Majorana bound states in a superconducting Rashba nanowire in the presence of antiferromagnetic order
• Optimized micromagnet geometries for Majorana zero modes in low g-factor materials
• Integrating micromagnets and hybrid nanowires for topological quantum computing
• Majorana bound state engineering via efficient real-space parameter optimization
• Magnetically-Confined Bound States in Rashba Systems
• 1D Majorana Goldstinos and partial supersymmetry breaking in quantum wires
• Majorana bound states in nanowire-superconductor hybrid systems in periodic magnetic fields
• Clock model and parafermions in Rashba nanowires
• Dispersive 1D Majorana modes with emergent supersymmetry in 1D proximitized superconductors via spatially-modulated potentials and magnetic fields
• Weyl points in systems of multiple semiconductor-superconductor quantum dots
• The effect of external electric fields on silicon with superconducting gallium nano-precipitates
• Nanoscale stray fields from micromagnets for optimal spin qubit architecture