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  • Letter

Tunable proximity effects and topological superconductivity in ferromagnetic hybrid nanowires

Samuel D. Escribano1, Elsa Prada2, Yuval Oreg3, and Alfredo Levy Yeyati1,*

  • 1Departamento de Física Teórica de la Materia Condensada C5, Condensed Matter Physics Center (IFIMAC) and Instituto Nicolás Cabrera, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid, Spain
  • 2Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), E-28049 Madrid, Spain
  • 3Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610, Israel

  • *Corresponding author: a.l.yeyati@uam.es

Phys. Rev. B 104, L041404 – Published 19 July, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.104.L041404

Abstract

Hybrid semiconducting nanowire devices combining epitaxial superconductor and ferromagnetic insulator layers have been recently explored experimentally as an alternative platform for topological superconductivity at zero applied magnetic field. In this proof-of-principle work we show that the topological regime can be reached in actual devices depending on some geometrical constraints. To this end, we perform numerical simulations of InAs wires in which we explicitly include the superconducting Al and magnetic EuS shells, as well as the interaction with the electrostatic environment at a self-consistent mean-field level. Our calculations show that both the magnetic and the superconducting proximity effects on the nanowire can be tuned by nearby gates thanks to their ability to move the wavefunction across the wire section. We find that the topological phase is achieved in significant portions of the phase diagram only in configurations where the Al and EuS layers overlap on some wire facet, due to the rather local direct induced spin polarization and the appearance of an extra indirect exchange field through the superconductor. While of obvious relevance for the explanation of recent experiments, tunable proximity effects are of interest in the broader field of superconducting spintronics.

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