Speaker: Dr. Chuxiao Liu

Affiliation: Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Date: 14:00, Oct 9 (Tuesday), 2018, 

Venue: Room S302, Kavli ITS, UCAS [View Map]

Abstract:

Strongly spin-orbit-coupled semiconducting nanowires proximitized by conventional s-wave superconductors are known to be one of the ideal platforms exhibiting topological superconductivity. Under a large enough Zeeman field, such hybrid nanowires can host zero-energy Majorana bound states at the wire ends. Such Majorana bound states obey non-Abelian statistics, thus form a promising platform for the implementation of topological quantum computation. One of the most accessible ways to detect the existence of Majorana bound states is to measure the tunnel conductance through a normal-metal-superconductor junction. The hallmark of Majorana bound states is a conductance peak of 2e^2/h at zero bias voltage at zero temperature. In this talk, we discuss another type of bound state in such semiconductor-superconductor nanowires. These bound states show very similar tunneling conductance behavior as Majorana bound states. But these Andreev bound states are induced by smooth potential variation in the nanowire and are topologically trivial. To make further progress in the Majorana experiments, it is very important to differentiate between the two types of bound states. We therefore also discuss several feasible methods for distinguishing trivial Andreev bound states and topological Majorana bound states. 

Speaker’s CV:

> 2008 - 2012: B.S. Fudan University, Department of physics

> 2012 - 2018: Ph.D. University of Maryland, College Park. Advisor: Jay D. Sau, and co-advisor: Sankar Das Sarma

> 2018 - to date: Postdoc. Delft University of Technology. Advisor: Michael Wimmer, and co-advisor: Anton Akhmerov