Majorana fermions and transport in quantum wires with strong spin-orbit coupling

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Felix von Oppen
• Co-Applicant: Professor Yuval Oreg
• Subject Area: Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198456382

Recently, it became clear that one of the Standard Systems of semiconductor spintronics - namely one- or two-dimensional semiconductor wires with strong spinorbit coupling - offer a promising platform for topological quantum computation. It was shown that these Systems, when brought into proximity with s-wave superconductors, can host Majorana fermions. Most importantly, it was found for one-dimensional wires that these Majorana fermions can be created, manipulated äs well äs fused by the application of gate voltages to segments of the wire. On wire networks, the Majorana fermions obey non-Abelian quantum statistics despite the absence of superconducting vortices which were at the heart of previous arguments for non-Abelian statistics of Majorana fermions. In this project, we aim to investigate the transport properties of quantum wires hosting Majorana fermions. Specifically, we plan to discuss multi-segment wires which consist of regions in the topological (T) and nontopological (S) superconducting phase, the (normal) helical (H) phase, or the normal (N) phase. A central motivation for this project is to provide theoretical predictions for signatures of Majorana fermions in quantum wires to guide ongoing experimental work.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1285: Semiconductor Spintronics
• International Connection: Israel