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Transport spectroscopy of NS nanowire junctions with Majorana fermions

Elsa Prada, Pablo San-Jose, and Ramón Aguado
Phys. Rev. B 86, 180503(R) – Published 12 November 2012
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Abstract

We investigate transport through normal-superconductor nanowire junctions in the presence of spin-orbit coupling and magnetic field. As the Zeeman field crosses the critical bulk value Bc of the topological transition, a Majorana bound state (MBS) is formed, giving rise to a sharp zero-bias anomaly (ZBA) in the tunneling differential conductance. We identify novel features beyond this picture in wires with inhomogeneous depletion, such as the appearance of two MBSs inside a long depleted region for B<Bc. The resulting ZBA is in most cases weakly split and may coexist with Andreev bound states near zero energy. The ZBA may appear without evidence of a topological gap closing. This latter aspect is more evident in the multiband case and stems from a smooth pinch-off barrier. Most of these features are in qualitative agreement with recent experiments [V. Mourik et al., Science 336, 1003 (2012)]. We also discuss the rich phenomenology of the problem in other regimes which remain experimentally unexplored.

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  • Received 29 March 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.86.180503

©2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Elsa Prada1, Pablo San-Jose2, and Ramón Aguado1

  • 1Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC), Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
  • 2Instituto de Estructura de la Materia (IEM-CSIC), Serrano 123, 28006 Madrid, Spain

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Issue

Vol. 86, Iss. 18 — 1 November 2012

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