Abstract

Heterostructures of spin-orbit coupled materials with s-wave superconductors are thought to be capable of supporting zero-energy Majorana bound states. Such excitations are known to obey non-Abelian statistics in two dimensions, and are thus relevant to topological quantum computation (TQC). In a one-dimensional system, Majorana states are localized to phase boundaries. In order to bypass the constraints of one dimension, a wire network may be created, allowing the exchange of Majoranas by way of junctions in the network. Alicea et al. have proposed such a network as a platform for TQC, showing that the Majorana bound states obey non-Abelian exchange statistics even in quasi-one-dimensional systems.(1) Here we show that the particular realization of non-Abelian statistics produced in a Majorana wire network is highly dependent on the local properties of individual wire junctions. For a simply connected network, the possible realizations can be characterized by the chirality of individual junctions. There is in general no requirement for junction chiralities to remain consistent across a wire network. We show how the chiralities of different junctions may be compared experimentally and discuss the implications for TQC in Majorana wire networks.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2011
Volume
84
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.84.035120
Journal
Physical Review B
Contributors