We study magnetotransport through topological insulator nanowires shaped in the form of a constriction, as can be obtained by etching techniques. The magnetic field is coaxial turning the nanowire into a magnetochiral junction. We show in a detailed analytical and numerical study that two main transport regimes emerge, depending on the central narrow region being short or long as compared to the magnetic length at the junction entrance and exit. In both cases the central region hosts Dirac-particle-in-a-box states due to magnetic confinement, whose conductance properties are strongly influenced by Landau levels at the ends of the constriction. Notably, in the low-energy regime only chiral states with a specific handedness can transport charge across the junction. Based on these properties and general symmetry considerations we argue that the shaped nanowire should exhibit strong magnetochiral nonreciprocal transport beyond linear response. We employ a numerical tight-binding implementation of an effective 2D model on a nonhomogeneous grid, capable of simulating samples of realistic sizes, and test its soundness against full simulations for scaled-down 3D topological insulator wires.

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• Landau levels
• Magnetotransport
• Surface states
• Quantum wires
• Topological insulators