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Published August 26, 2013 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Gate defined wires in HgTe quantum wells: from Majorana fermions to spintronics

Abstract

We introduce a promising new platform for Majorana zero-modes and various spintronics applications based on gate-defined wires in HgTe quantum wells. Due to the Dirac-like band structure for HgTe the physics of such systems differs markedly from that of conventional quantum wires. Most strikingly, we show that the subband parameters for gate-defined HgTe wires exhibit exquisite tunability: modest gate voltage variation allows one to modulate the Rashba spin-orbit energies from zero up to ~30K, and the effective g-factors from zero up to giant values exceeding 600. The large achievable spin-orbit coupling and g-factors together allow one to access Majorana modes in this setting at exceptionally low magnetic fields while maintaining robustness against disorder. As an additional benefit, gate-defined wires (in HgTe or other settings) should greatly facilitate the fabrication of networks for refined transport experiments used to detect Majoranas, as well as the realization of non-Abelian statistics and quantum information devices.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Physical Society. Received 14 March 2013; published 26 August 2013. The authors gratefully acknowledge illuminating conversations with Jim Eisenstein, David Goldhaber-Gordon, Taylor Hughes, and Torsten Karzig. This research was supported by the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina through grant LPDS 2011-14 (J.R.); the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (J.A.); the National Science Foundation through grant DMR-1055522 (J.A.) and grant DMR-1206016 (A.Y.); and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This work is also supported in part by a grant from the Microsoft Corporation (A.Y.).

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevX.3.031011.pdf

Submitted - 1303.1207v1.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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