Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW B
Volume 93, Issue 24, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.93.245404
Keywords
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Funding
- NSERC PGSD program
- National Science Foundation [DMR-1341822, PHY-1066293]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
- NSF Physics Frontiers Center
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [GBMF1250]
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech
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Recent experiments have produced mounting evidence of Majorana zero modes in nanowire-superconductor hybrids. Signatures of an expected topological phase transition accompanying the onset of these modes nevertheless remain elusive. We investigate a fundamental question concerning this issue: Do well-formed Majorana modes necessarily entail a sharp phase transition in these setups? Assuming reasonable parameters, we argue that finite-size effects can dramatically smooth this putative transition into a crossover, even in systems large enough to support well-localized Majorana modes. We propose overcoming such finite-size effects by examining the behavior of low-lying excited states through tunneling spectroscopy. In particular, the excited-state energies exhibit characteristic field and density dependence, and scaling with system size, that expose an approaching topological phase transition. We suggest several experiments for extracting the predicted behavior. As a useful byproduct, the protocols also allow one to measure the wire's spin-orbit coupling directly in its superconducting environment.
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