Majorana bound states in two-channel time-reversal-symmetric nanowire systems

Erikas Gaidamauskas, Jens Paaske, Karsten Flensberg

Published 2013-09-11, updated 2014-03-12Version 3

We consider time-reversal-symmetric two-channel semiconducting quantum wires proximity coupled to an s-wave superconductor. We analyze the requirements for a nontrivial topological phase and find that necessary conditions are 1) the determinant of the pairing matrix in channel space must be negative, 2) inversion symmetry must be broken, and 3) the two channels must have different spin-orbit couplings. The first condition can be implemented in semiconducting nanowire systems where interactions suppress intra-channel pairing, while the inversion symmetry can be broken by tuning the chemical potentials of the channels. For the case of collinear spin-orbit directions, we find a general expression for the topological invariant by block diagonalization into two blocks with chiral symmetry only. By projection to the low-energy sector, we solve for the zero modes explicitly and study the details of the gap closing, which in the general case happens at finite momenta.