Spin transport in ferromagnet-InSb nanowire quantum devices

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental study of spin transport in InSb nanowires with ferromagnetic contacts, demonstrating spin polarization, gating control, and spin filtering, which could enable topological quantum devices without external magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces the first experimental investigation of spin transport in InSb nanowires with ferromagnetic contacts, enabling local spin degeneracy lifting without magnetic fields.

Findings

Observation of spin polarization and spin-dependent transport.

Electrostatic gating tunes magnetic signals and reveals spin filtering.

Potential for spin-based quantum devices without external magnetic fields.

Abstract

Signatures of Majorana zero modes (MZMs), which are the building blocks for fault-tolerant topological quantum computing, have been observed in semiconductor nanowires (NW) with strong spin-orbital-interaction (SOI), such as InSb and InAs NWs with proximity-induced superconductivity. Realizing topological superconductivity and MZMs in this most widely-studied platform also requires eliminating spin degeneracy, which is realized by applying a magnetic field to induce a helical gap. However, the applied field can adversely impact the induced superconducting state in the NWs and also places geometric restrictions on the device, which can affect scaling of future MZM-based quantum registers. These challenges could be circumvented by integrating magnetic elements with the NWs. With this motivation, in this work we report the first experimental investigation of spin transport across InSb NWs, which are enabled by devices with ferromagnetic (FM) contacts. We observe signatures of spin polarization and spin-dependent transport in the quasi-one-dimensional ballistic regime. Moreover, we show that electrostatic gating tunes the observed magnetic signal and also reveals a transport regime where the device acts as a spin filter. These results open an avenue towards developing MZM devices in which spin degeneracy is lifted locally, without the need of an applied magnetic field. They also provide a path for realizing spin-based devices that leverage spin-orbital states in quantum wires.