Disorder-induced topological transitions in multichannel Majorana wires

Disorder-induced topological transitions in multichannel Majorana wires

Pekerten, B. (Sabancı University)
Teker, A. (Sabancı University)
Bozat, Ö. (Sabancı University)
Wimmer, M.T. (TU Delft QRD/Wimmer Group; TU Delft QuTech Advanced Research Centre; Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
Adagideli, I (Sabancı University)

2017

In this work, we investigate the effect of disorder on the topological properties of multichannel superconductor nanowires. While the standard expectation is that the spectral gap is closed and opened at transitions that change the topological index of the wire, we show that the closing and opening of a transport gap can also cause topological transitions, even in the presence of nonzero density of states across the transition. Such transport gaps induced by disorder can change the topological index, driving a topologically trivial wire into a nontrivial state or vice versa. We focus on the Rashba spin-orbit coupled semiconductor nanowires in proximity to a conventional superconductor, which is an experimentally relevant system, and we obtain analytical formulas for topological transitions in these wires, valid for generic realizations of disorder. Full tight-binding simulations show excellent agreement with our analytical results without any fitting parameters.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2eaf5ae2-7602-47ba-9048-8a5dfb0a6121

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.95.064507

1098-0121

Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics), 95 (6)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2017 B. Pekerten, A. Teker, Ö. Bozat, M.T. Wimmer, I Adagideli