• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.98.155314
• Corpus ID: 119394241

Quantized zero-bias conductance plateau in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures without topological Majorana zero modes

@article{Moore2018QuantizedZC,
  title={Quantized zero-bias conductance plateau in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures without topological Majorana zero modes},
  author={Christopher Moore and Chuanchang Zeng and Tudor D Stanescu and Sumanta Tewari},
  journal={Physical Review B},
  year={2018}
}

• C. Moore, Chuanchang Zeng, +1 author S. Tewari
• Published 9 April 2018
• Physics
• Physical Review B

We show that partially separated Andreev bound states (ps-ABSs), comprised of pairs of overlapping Majorana bound states (MBSs) emerging in quantum dot-semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures, produce robust zero bias conductance plateaus in end-of-wire charge tunneling experiments. These plateaus remain quantized at $2e^2/h$ over large ranges of experimental control parameters. In light of recent experiments reporting the observation of robust $2e^2/h$-quantized conductance plateaus in local charge tunneling experiments, we perform extensive numerical calculations to explicitly show that such quantized conductance plateaus, which are obtained by varying control parameters such as the tunnel barrier height, the super gate potential, and the applied magnetic field, can arise as a result of the existence of ps-ABSs. Because ps-ABSs can form rather generically in the topologically trivial regime, even in the absence of disorder, our results suggest that the observation of a robust quantized conductance plateau does not represent sufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of non-Abelian topologically-protected Majorana zero modes localized at the opposite ends of a wire.