Search for Majorana fermions in topological superconductors.

Technical Report · Wed Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1177084· OSTI ID:1177084

Pan, Wei ^[1]; Shi, Xiaoyan ^[1]; Hawkins, Samuel D. ^[1]; Klem, John Frederick ^[1]

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1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The goal of this project is to search for Majorana fermions (a new quantum particle) in a topological superconductor (a new quantum matter achieved in a topological insulator proximitized by an s-wave superconductor). Majorana fermions (MFs) are electron-like particles that are their own anti-particles. MFs are shown to obey non-Abelian statistics and, thus, can be harnessed to make a fault-resistant topological quantum computer. With the arrival of topological insulators, novel schemes to create MFs have been proposed in hybrid systems by combining a topological insulator with a conventional superconductor. In this LDRD project, we will follow the theoretical proposals to search for MFs in one-dimensional (1D) topological superconductors. 1D topological superconductor will be created inside of a quantum point contact (with the metal pinch-off gates made of conventional s-wave superconductors such as niobium) in a two-dimensional topological insulator (such as inverted type-II InAs/GaSb heterostructure).

• Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC04-94AL85000
• OSTI ID: 1177084
• Report Number(s): SAND2014--18909; 540249
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY