Ballistic transport in 1D Rashba systems in the context of Majorana nanowires

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder affects ballistic transport in 1D Rashba nanowires, providing guidance on detecting signatures of the helical gap crucial for Majorana modes in topological superconductivity.

Contribution

It offers a theoretical analysis of disorder effects on transport signatures in Rashba nanowires, aiding experimental identification of conditions for Majorana mode emergence.

Findings

Disorder suppresses signatures of the helical gap in ballistic transport.

The presence of Fabry-Pérot resonances can mask the helical gap signatures.

Guidelines are provided for estimating disorder levels in nanowire experiments.

Abstract

Recent work on Majorana-bound states in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures has elucidated the key role of unintentional (and unknown) disorder (producing low-energy Andreev-bound states) in the system, which is detrimental to the emergence of Majorana-carrying topological superconductivity artificially engineered through the combination of superconductivity, Zeeman spin splitting, and Rashba spin-orbit coupling. In particular, the disorder must be smaller than the superconducting gap for the appearance of Majorana modes, but the disorder-induced appearance of subgap Andreev-bound states suppresses the Majorana modes. We theoretically investigate, as a function of disorder, the normal state ballistic transport properties of nanowires with and without superconductors in order to provide guidance on how to experimentally estimate the level of disorder. Experimentally, the superconductivity is suppressed simply by rotating the magnetic field appropriately, so both physics can be studied in the same set-up. In particular, the presence of spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splitting produces a helical gap in the 1D electronic band structure, which should have clear signatures in ballistic transport unless these signatures are suppressed by disorder and/or Fabry-P\'erot resonances associated with the finite wire sizes. Our work provides a benchmarking of when and what signatures of the putative helical gap (which is essential for the emergence of Majorana modes by leading to a single Fermi surface) could manifest in realistic nanowires.