TY - JOUR
T1 - Disorder-induced topological transitions in multichannel Majorana wires
AU - Pekerten, B.
AU - Teker, A.
AU - Bozat, Ö.
AU - Wimmer, Michael
AU - Adagideli, I
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - In this work, we investigate the effect of disorder on the topological properties of multichannel superconductor nanowires. While the standard expectation is that the spectral gap is closed and opened at transitions that change the topological index of the wire, we show that the closing and opening of a transport gap can also cause topological transitions, even in the presence of nonzero density of states across the transition. Such transport gaps induced by disorder can change the topological index, driving a topologically trivial wire into a nontrivial state or vice versa. We focus on the Rashba spin-orbit coupled semiconductor nanowires in proximity to a conventional superconductor, which is an experimentally relevant system, and we obtain analytical formulas for topological transitions in these wires, valid for generic realizations of disorder. Full tight-binding simulations show excellent agreement with our analytical results without any fitting parameters.
AB - In this work, we investigate the effect of disorder on the topological properties of multichannel superconductor nanowires. While the standard expectation is that the spectral gap is closed and opened at transitions that change the topological index of the wire, we show that the closing and opening of a transport gap can also cause topological transitions, even in the presence of nonzero density of states across the transition. Such transport gaps induced by disorder can change the topological index, driving a topologically trivial wire into a nontrivial state or vice versa. We focus on the Rashba spin-orbit coupled semiconductor nanowires in proximity to a conventional superconductor, which is an experimentally relevant system, and we obtain analytical formulas for topological transitions in these wires, valid for generic realizations of disorder. Full tight-binding simulations show excellent agreement with our analytical results without any fitting parameters.
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2eaf5ae2-7602-47ba-9048-8a5dfb0a6121
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013070421&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.95.064507
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.95.064507
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85013070421
SN - 1098-0121
VL - 95
JO - Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics)
JF - Physical Review B (Condensed Matter and Materials Physics)
IS - 6
M1 - 064507
ER -