Majorana resonances and how to avoid them in periodic topological superconductor-nanowire structures

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenge of Majorana resonances in semiconductor-superconductor nanowires and proposes a new array structure to realize Majorana fermions with non-Abelian statistics for topological quantum computing.

Contribution

It identifies the issue of Majorana resonances in current nanowire setups and introduces a novel array design to achieve non-Abelian Majorana fermions.

Findings

Majorana resonances do not exhibit non-Abelian statistics.

Proposed array structure enables the generation of non-Abelian Majorana fermions.

Overcoming the resonance challenge advances topological quantum computing.

Abstract

Semiconducting nanowires in proximity to superconductors are promising experimental systems for Majorana fermions which may ultimately be used as building blocks for topological quantum computers. A serious challenge in the experimental realization of the Majorana fermion in these semiconductor-superconductor nanowire structures is tuning the semiconductor chemical potential in close proximity to the metallic superconductor. We show that, presently realizable structures in experiments with tunable chemical potential lead to Majorana resonances, which are interesting in their own right, but do not manifest non-Abelian statistics. This poses a central challenge to the field. We show how to overcome this challenge, thus resolving a crucial barrier to the solid state realization of a topological system containing the Majorana fermion. We propose a new topological superconducting array structure where introducing the superconducting proximity effect from adjacent nanowires generates Majorana fermions with non-Abelian statistics.