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 language | English |
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Journal | Nature Physics |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 12 |
Pages (from-to) | 1017-1021 |
Number of pages | 5 |
ISSN | 1745-2473 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2015 |
Bibliographical note
[QDev]Keywords
- cond-mat.mes-hall
- cond-mat.supr-con