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Gate-defined wires in twisted bilayer graphene: From electrical detection of intervalley coherence to internally engineered Majorana modes

Alex Thomson1,2,3,4,*, Ina M. Sorensen1,2, Stevan Nadj-Perge2,5, and Jason Alicea1,2,3

  • 1Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 2Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 3Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA
  • 5T. J. Watson Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

  • *thomson@caltech.edu

Phys. Rev. B 105, L081405 – Published 9 February, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.L081405

Abstract

Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) realizes a highly tunable, strongly interacting system featuring superconductivity and various correlated insulating states. We establish gate-defined wires in TBG with proximity-induced spin-orbit coupling as (i) a tool for revealing the nature of correlated insulators and (ii) a platform for Majorana-based topological qubits. We show that the band structure of a gate-defined wire immersed in an intervalley coherent correlated insulator inherits electrically detectable fingerprints of symmetry breaking native to the latter. Surrounding the wire by a superconducting TBG region on one side and an intervalley coherent correlated insulator on the other further enables the formation of Majorana zero modes—possibly even at zero magnetic field depending on the precise symmetry-breaking order present. Our proposal not only introduces a highly gate-tunable topological qubit medium relying on internally generated proximity effects but can also shed light on the Cooper-pairing mechanism in TBG.

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