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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 50: Focussed Session: Majorana Fermions in Condensed Matter (jointly with DS, HL, MA, and TT)

O 50.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 15:00–15:30, H20

Subgap States in Majorana Wires — •Piet Brouwer — Freie Universität Berlin

A one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled nanowire with proximity-induced pairing from a nearby s-wave superconductor may be in a topological nontrivial state, in which it has a zero energy Majorana bound state at each end. In this talk, I will discuss how non-idealities in this proposal, such as potential disorder, deviations from a strict one-dimensional limit, or details concerning the termination of the wire, affect the topological phase and its signatures in a current-voltage measurement. In particular, I'll argue that the topological phase can persist at weak disorder or for multichannel wires, although some of the signatures of the presence of Majorana fermions are obscured.