Phenomenology of Majorana zero modes in full-shell hybrid nanowires

Abstract

Full-shell nanowires have been proposed as an alternative nanowire design in the search of topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes (MZMs). They are hybrid nanostructures consisting of a semiconductor core fully covered by a thin superconductor shell and subject to a magnetic flux. In this work we critically examine this proposal, finding a very rich spectral phenomenology that combines the Little-Parks modulation of the parent-gap superconductor with flux, the presence of flux-dispersing Caroli-de Gennes-Matricon (CdGM) analog subgap states, and the emergence of MZMs across finite flux intervals that depend on the transverse wavefunction profile of the charge density in the core section. Through microscopic simulations and analytical derivations, we study different regimes for the semiconductor core, ranging from the hollow-core approximation, to the tubular-core nanowire appropriate for a semiconductor tube with an insulating core, to the solid-core nanowire. We compute the phase diagrams for the different models in cylindrical nanowires and find that MZMs typically coexist with CdGM analogs at zero energy, rendering them gapless. However, we also find topologically protected parameter regions, or islands, with gapped MZMs. In this sense, the most promising candidate to obtain topologically protected MZMs in a full-shell geometry is the nanowire with a tubular-shaped core. Moving beyond pristine nanowires, we study the effect of mode mixing perturbations. Strikingly, mode mixing can act like a topological $p$-wave pairing between particle-hole Bogoliubov partners, and is therefore able to create new topologically protected MZMs in regions of the phase diagram that were originally trivial. As a result, the phase diagram is utterly transformed and exhibits protected MZMs in around half of the parameter space.

28 pages, 13 figures. Final version

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Josephson effect and critical currents in trivial and topological full-shell hybrid nanowires
• Absence of Majorana oscillations in finite-length full-shell hybrid nanowires
• Subgap states in semiconductor-superconductor devices for quantum technologies: Andreev qubits and minimal Majorana chains
• Subgap transport in superconductor--semiconductor hybrid islands: Weak and strong coupling regimes
• InP/GaSb core-shell nanowires: a novel hole-based platform with strong spin-orbit coupling for full-shell hybrid devices
• Fluxoid valve effect in full-shell nanowire Josephson junctions
• Phase-controlled minimal Kitaev chain in multiterminal Josephson junctions
• Caroli-de Gennes-Matricon Analogs in Full-Shell Hybrid Nanowires
• Superconducting bistability in floating Al islands of hybrid Al/InAs nanowires
• Ab initio study of Proximity-Induced Superconductivity in PbTe/Pb heterostructures
• Absence of Quasi-Majorana False Positives in Full-Shell Hybrid Nanowires
• Fluxoid solitons in superconducting tapered tubes and bottlenecks