English

Enhanced and modulable induced superconducting gap and effective Land\'e g-factor in Pb-InSb hybrid devices

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2025-06-05 v1 Superconductivity Quantum Physics

Abstract

The hybrid system of a conventional superconductor (SC) on a semiconductor (SM) nanowire with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) represents a promising platform for achieving topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes (MZMs) towards topological quantum computation. While aluminum (Al)-based hybrid nanowire devices have been widely utilized, their limited superconducting gap and intrinsic weak SOC as well as small Land\'e g-factor may hinder future experimental advancements. In contrast, we demonstrate that lead (Pb)-based hybrid quantum devices exhibit a remarkably large and hard proximity-induced superconducting gap, exceeding that of Al by an order of magnitude. By exploiting electrostatic gating to modulate wavefunction distribution and SC-SM interfacial coupling, this gap can be continuously tuned from its maximum value (~1.4 meV, matching the bulk Pb gap) down to nearly zero while maintaining the hardness. Furthermore, magnetic-field-dependent measurements reveal a radial evolution of the gap structure with anti-crossing feature, indicative of strong SOC and huge effective g-factors up to 76. These findings underscore the superior functionality of Pb-based hybrid systems, significantly advancing their potential for realizing and stabilizing MZMs and the further scalable topological quantum architectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.03563,
  title  = {Enhanced and modulable induced superconducting gap and effective Land\'e g-factor in Pb-InSb hybrid devices},
  author = {Guoan Li and Xiaofan Shi and Ziwei Dou and Guang Yang and Jiayu Shi and Marco Rossi and Ghada Badawy and Yuxiao Song and Ruixuan Zhang and Yupeng Li and Zhiyuan Zhang and Anqi Wang and Xingchen Guo and Xiao Deng and Bingbing Tong and Peiling Li and Zhaozheng Lyu and Guangtong Liu and Fanming Qu and Erik P. A. M. Bakkers and Michał P. Nowak and Paweł Wójcik and Li Lu and Jie Shen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.03563},
  year   = {2025}
}