English

Interplay of disorder and interaction in Majorana quantum wires

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2012-10-10 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We study the interplay between disorder and interaction in one-dimensional topological superconductors which carry localized Majorana zero-energy states. Using Abelian bosonization and the perturbative renormalization group (RG) approach, we obtain the RG-flow and the associated scaling dimensions of the parameters and identify the critical points of the low-energy theory. We predict a quantum phase transition from a topological superconducting phase to a non-topological localized phase, and obtain the phase boundary between these two phases as a function of the electron-electron interaction and the disorder strength in the nanowire. Based on an instanton analysis which incorporates the effect of disorder, we also identify a large regime of stability of the Majorana-carrying topological phase in the parameter space of the model.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.2837,
  title  = {Interplay of disorder and interaction in Majorana quantum wires},
  author = {Alejandro M. Lobos and Roman M. Lutchyn and S. Das Sarma},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.2837},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

New version includes a section and an appendix with a detailed study on the effect of interaction and disorder on the stability of Majorana end-states. 6 pages, 1 figure