Hole-Doped Semiconductor Nanowire on Top of an $s$-Wave Superconductor: A New and Experimentally Accessible System for Majorana Fermions

Hole-Doped Semiconductor Nanowire on Top of an $s$ -Wave Superconductor: A New and Experimentally Accessible System for Majorana Fermions

Li Mao, Ming Gong, E. Dumitrescu, Sumanta Tewari, and Chuanwei Zhang

Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 177001 – Published 24 April 2012

Abstract

Majorana fermions were envisioned by Majorana in 1935 to describe neutrinos. Recently, it has been shown that they can be realized even in a class of electron-doped semiconductors, on which ordinary $s$ -wave superconductivity is proximity induced, provided the time reversal symmetry is broken by an external Zeeman field above a threshold. Here we show that in a hole-doped semiconductor nanowire the threshold Zeeman field for Majorana fermions can be very small for some magic values of the hole density. In contrast to the electron-doped systems, smaller Zeeman fields and much stronger spin-orbit coupling and effective mass of holes allow the hole-doped systems to support Majorana fermions in a parameter regime which is routinely realized in current experiments.

Received 7 June 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.177001

Authors & Affiliations

Li Mao¹, Ming Gong¹, E. Dumitrescu², Sumanta Tewari², and Chuanwei Zhang^1,*

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164, USA
²Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, USA