Abstract
Majorana quasiparticles are generally detected in a 1D topological superconductor by tunneling electrons into its edge, with an emergent zero-bias conductance peak (ZBCP). However, such a ZBCP can also result from other mechanisms, hence, additional verifications are required. Since the emergence of a Majorana must be accompanied by an opening of a topological gap in the bulk, two simultaneous measurements are performed: one in the bulk and another at the edge of a 1D InAs nanowire coated with epitaxial aluminum. Only under certain experimental parameters, a closing of the superconducting bulk-gap that is followed by its reopening, appears simultaneously with a ZBCP at the edge. Such events suggest the occurrence of a topologically non-trivial phase. Yet, we also find that ZBCPs are observed under different tuning parameters without simultaneous reopening of a bulk-gap. This demonstrates the importance of simultaneous probing of bulk and edge in the identification of Majorana edge-states.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1940 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 29 Apr 2019 |
Bibliographical note
We thank H. Inoue, A. Haim, Y. Ronen, Y. Cohen and Y. Reiner for useful discussions. We are grateful to J.-H. Kang and D. Mahalu for their professional contribution, and to Michael Fourmansky for professional technical assistance. We thank S. Das Sarma and J. Alicea for their useful comments on the paper. M.H. acknowledges the partial support of the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), the Minerva foundation, and the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC—Grant agreement 339070. H.S. acknowledges partial financial support of the Israeli Science Foundation (Grant no. 532/12 and Grant no. 3–6799), Israeli Ministry of Science (Grant no. 0321–4801 (16097)), and BSF Grant no. 2014098. H.S. is an incumbent of the Henry and Gertrude F. Rothschild Research Fellow Chair. Y.O. acknowledges support by the BSF and ISF grants and by the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC—Grant agreement MUNATOP-340210 and under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement LEGOTOP No 788715).A.G. and E.B. contributed to this work in the sample design, device fabrication, measurement setup, and data acquisition. A.G. wrote the paper, made the figures, and did the data analysis. M.H. contributed to the sample design, data interpretation, and writing of the paper. Y.O. contributed to the data interpretation and writing of the paper. H.S. contributed to molecular beam epitaxy growth of the nanowires and writing of the paper.