English

Manipulating Majorana Fermions in Quantum Nanowires with Broken Inversion Symmetry

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2013-02-18 v2 Strongly Correlated Electrons Superconductivity

Abstract

We study a Majorana-carrying quantum wire, driven into a trivial phase by breaking the spatial inversion symmetry with a tilted external magnetic field. Interestingly, we predict that a supercurrent applied in the proximate superconductor is able to restore the topological phase and therefore the Majorana end-states. Using Abelian bosonization, we further confirm this result in the presence of electron-electron interactions and show a profound connection of this phenomenon to the physics of a one-dimensional doped Mott-insulator. The present results have important applications in e.g., realizing a supercurrent assisted braiding of Majorana fermions, which proves highly useful in topological quantum computation with realistic Majorana networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.7109,
  title  = {Manipulating Majorana Fermions in Quantum Nanowires with Broken Inversion Symmetry},
  author = {Xiong-Jun Liu and Alejandro M. Lobos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.7109},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures, Supplementary Material is added