Parity lifetime of bound states in a proximitized semiconductor nanowire

By A. Higginbotham, S. Albrecht, Gediminas Kirsanskas, W. Chang, F. Kuemmeth, P. Krogstrup, T. Jespersen, J. Nygård, K. Flensberg, Charles M. Marcus. Nature Physics, 2015

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Bound states in semiconductor–superconductor hybrids are shown to have parity lifetimes of over 10 milliseconds, suggesting that they could provide a platform for topological quantum computing. Quasiparticle excitations can compromise the performance of superconducting devices, causing high-frequency dissipation, decoherence in Josephson qubits1,2,3,4,5,6, and braiding errors in proposed Majorana-based topological quantum computers7,8,9. Quasiparticle dynamics have been studied in detail in metallic superconductors10,11,12,13,14 but remain relatively unexplored in semiconductor–superconductor structures, which are now being intensely pursued in the context of topological superconductivity. To this end, we use a system comprising a gate-confined semiconductor nanowire with an epitaxially grown superconductor layer, yielding an isolated, proximitized nanowire segment. We identify bound states in the semiconductor by means of bias spectroscopy, determine the characteristic temperatures and magnetic fields for quasiparticle excitations, and extract a parity lifetime (poisoning time) of the bound state in the semiconductor exceeding 10 ms.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aac8daf2364f35fb9b4403b984076350c4c97ba1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Condensed Matter Physics

Citations in the corpus

Milestones toward Majorana-based quantum computing (2015, background): “in proximitized nanowires [27] and related setups [28].”