Special CMTC Seminar

Date
Fri, Mar 11, 2016 1:15 pm - 2:15 pm
Location
2205 Toll Physics Building

Description

Speaker: Anton Akhmerov (Delft)

Title: Physics of Majorana nanowires beyond 1D models

Abstract: Semiconducting nanowires brought into contact with a
superconductor and subjected to an external magnetic field are one of
the two actively explored paths to creating Majoranas. Beautifully,
many physical phenomena occuring in these systems are captured by a
simple model containing only a single one-dimensional spinful electron
mode. However, while being amazingly useful for developing a basic
understanding of the system, this model can also be misleading because
of failing to capture several phenomena crucial for predicting the
properties of Majoranas. I will discuss two examples of such
phenomena: the effect of electrostatic interactions and the orbital
effect of magnetic field. While the physical system beyond 1D is too
complex to be treatable analytically, I will use simple estimates and
symmetry analysis to build up the intuition about the phenomena we are
studying.

Host: Jay Sau

http://www.physics.umd.edu/cmtc/seminars.html