Emergence of Majorana modes in cylindrical nanowires

¹ Institut de Fisica Interdisciplinària i de Sistemes Complexos IFISC (CSIC- UIB) E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain, EU
² Departament de Fisica, Universitat de les Illes Balears - E-07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain, EU

Received: 27 March 2013
Accepted: 26 July 2013

Abstract

We present calculations of Majorana edge modes in cylindrical nanowires of a semiconductor material with proximity-induced superconductivity. We consider a Rashba field along the transverse direction and an applied magnetic field in arbitrary orientation. Our analysis is based on exact numerical diagonalizations for the finite cylinder and on the complex band structure for the semi-infinite one. Orbital effects are responsible for a strong anisotropy of the critical field for which the effective gap vanishes. Robust Majorana modes are induced by the parallel-field component and we find regimes with more than one Majorana mode on the same edge. Experimentally, they would manifest as a specific sequence of zero-bias conductances as a function of the magnetic field. In the finite cylinder, a degradation of the Majorana modes due to interference of the two edges leads to oscillating non-zero energies for large enough fields.