Comment on "Ballistic Majorana Nanowire Devices" by Gul et al. Nature Nanotechnology 2018

TL;DR

This paper critically re-analyzes data from a 2018 study on Majorana nanowire devices, revealing inconsistencies and evidence of disorder that challenge the original claims of ballistic behavior and Majorana signatures.

Contribution

It provides a detailed re-analysis of publicly available experimental data, exposing data handling issues and questioning the original interpretation of zero bias peaks as Majorana signals.

Findings

Evidence of quantum dots and disorder in the data

Data selection and processing issues in the original study

Contradictions with claims of ballistic Majorana devices

Abstract

This work re-analyzes Gul et al. Nature Nanotechnology 2018 "Ballistic Majorana nanowire devices" using fuller data from the original experiments released in 2023 on Zenodo. The authors have prepared a correction to their article that appeared in Nature Nanotechnology in 2024. However, the correction does not address the concerns we identify here. We demonstrate that the fuller data contain extensive evidence for quantum dots and disorder that are completely inconsistent with the authors' conclusion that they have achieved ballistic devices containing zero bias peaks of likely Majorana origin. We show how data selection, data cropping and undisclosed data processing played a role in composing the figures of the final published paper.