Do Majorana zero modes emerge in the hybrid nanowire under a strong magnetic field?

TL;DR

This paper refines the understanding of magnetic field conditions for Majorana zero modes in hybrid nanowires, showing a topological phase diagram with a closed triangle region and confirming predictions through quantum transport calculations.

Contribution

It derives a new topological phase diagram for Majorana modes in hybrid nanowires, revealing a closed triangular region and clarifying experimental conditions.

Findings

Topological phase diagram is a closed triangle in chemical potential vs. Zeeman energy.

Zero bias conductance peak disappears at high magnetic fields.

Accessible magnetic field ranges are specified for different hybrid systems.

Abstract

The hybrid nanowire consisting of semiconductor with proximity to superconductor is expected to serve as an experimental platform to display Majorana zero modes. By rederiving its effective Kitaev model with spins, we discover a novel topological phase diagram, which assigns a more precise constraint on the magnetic field strength for the emergence of Majorana zero modes. It then turns out the effective pairing strength dressed by the proximity effect exhibits a significant dependence on the magnetic field, and thus the topological phase region is refined as a closed triangle in the phase diagram with chemical potential vs. Zeeman energy(which is obviously different from the open hyperbolic region known before). This prediction is confirmed again by an exact calculation of quantum transport, where the zero bias peak of $2e^{2}/h$ in the differential conductance spectrum, as the necessary evidence for the Majorana zero modes, disappears when the magnetic field grows too strong. For illustrations with practical hybrid systems, in the InSb nanowire coupled to NbTiN, the accessible magnetic field range is around 0.1--1.5T; when coupled to aluminum shell, the accessible magnetic field range should be smaller than 0.12T. These predictions obviously clarify the current controversial issues about some experiments of Majorana zero modes with hybrid nonawire.