Parity lifetime of bound states in a proximitized semiconductor nanowire

Andrew Patrick Higginbotham, Sven Marian Albrecht, Gediminas Kirsanskas, Willy Chang, Ferdinand Kuemmeth, Peter Krogstrup, Thomas Sand Jespersen, Jesper Nygård, Karsten Flensberg, Charles M. Marcus

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Abstract

Quasiparticle excitations can compromise the performance of superconducting devices, causing high frequency dissipation, decoherence in Josephson qubits, and braiding errors in proposed Majorana-based topological quantum computers. Quasiparticle dynamics have been studied in detail in metallic superconductors but remain relatively unexplored in semiconductor-superconductor structures, which are now being intensely pursued in the context of topological superconductivity. To this end, we introduce a new physical system comprised of a gate-confined semiconductor nanowire with an epitaxially grown superconductor layer, yielding an isolated, proximitized nanowire segment. We identify Andreev-like bound states in the semiconductor via 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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalNature Physics
Volume11
Issue number12
Pages (from-to)1017-1021
Number of pages5
ISSN1745-2473
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2015

Bibliographical note

[QDev]

Keywords

  • cond-mat.mes-hall
  • cond-mat.supr-con

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