Gate-defined wires in twisted bilayer graphene: from electrical detection of inter-valley coherence to internally engineered Majorana modes

TL;DR

This paper proposes using gate-defined wires in twisted bilayer graphene to detect inter-valley coherence and engineer Majorana modes, advancing quantum computing and understanding of correlated states.

Contribution

It introduces a method to reveal symmetry-breaking in TBG and demonstrates how to create Majorana zero modes using gate-defined structures and proximity effects.

Findings

Gate-defined wires detect inter-valley coherence signatures.

Majorana zero modes can form at zero magnetic field.

The approach enables gate-tunable topological qubits.

Abstract

Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) realizes a highly tunable, strongly interacting system featuring superconductivity and various correlated insulating states. We establish gate-defined wires in TBG with proximity-induced spin-orbit coupling as $(i)$ a tool for revealing the nature of correlated insulators and $(ii)$ a platform for Majorana-based topological qubits. In particular, we show that the band structure of a gate-defined wire immersed in an `inter-valley coherent' correlated insulator inherits electrically detectable fingerprints of symmetry breaking native to the latter. Surrounding the wire by a superconducting TBG region on one side and an inter-valley coherent correlated insulator on the other further enables the formation of Majorana zero modes--possibly even at zero magnetic field depending on the precise symmetry-breaking order present. Our proposal not only introduces a highly gate-tunable topological qubit medium relying on internally generated proximity effects, but can also shed light on the Cooper-pairing mechanism in TBG.