Abstract

We study the electronic structure of full-shell superconductor-semiconductor nanowires, which have recently been proposed for creating Majorana zero modes, using an eight-band (k) over right arrow . (p) over right arrow model within a fully self-consistent Schrodinger-Poisson scheme. We find that the spin-orbit coupling induced by the intrinsic radial electric field is generically weak for subbands with their minimum near the Fermi energy. Furthermore, we show that the chemical potential windows consistent with the emergence of a topological phase are small and sparse and can only be reached by fine-tuning the diameter of the wire. These findings suggest that the parameter space consistent with the realization of a topological phase in full-shell InAs/Al nanowires is, at best, very narrow.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2019
Volume
99
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.99.161118
Journal
Physical Review B
Contributors