Majorana fermions in superconducting nanowires without spin-orbit coupling

Morten Kjaergaard, Konrad Wölms, Karsten Flensberg

Published 2011-11-09, updated 2014-07-16Version 4

We show that confined Majorana fermions can exist in nanowires with proximity induced s-wave superconducting pairing if the direction of an external magnetic field rotates along the wire. The system is equivalent to nanowires with Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling, with strength proportional to the derivative of the field angle. For realistic parameters, we demonstrate that a set of permanent magnets can bring a nearby nanowire into the topologically non-trivial phase with localized Majorana modes at its ends. Without the requirement of spin-orbit coupling this opens up for a new route for demonstration and design of Majorana fermion systems.