The engineering of topological superconducting correlations in quantum devices holds promises for new schemes of quantum computation. A wide class of systems expected to exhibit such exotic correlations are based on conductors with strong spinorbit interaction subject to a strong external magnetic field. Here, we show how these features can be autonomously induced by using a magnetic texture coupled to any quasi one dimensional conductor. We study a carbon nanotube with superconducting contacts in close proximity to a magnetic texture. Transport spectroscopy reveals a spectrum in which superconducting correlations in the carbon nanotube are deeply modified by a large spin orbit coupling. We extract a value of about 1.1 meV for this synthetic spin-orbi, larger than the intrinsic spin orbit energy in many other platforms. Furthermore, a robust zero energy state, the hallmark of devices hosting localized Majorana modes, emerges at zero magnetic field. Our findings could be used for advanced experiments, including microwave spectroscopy and braiding operations.

Date Published: 10 September 2019
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Proc. SPIE 11090, Spintronics XII, 110901J (10 September 2019);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11090:
Spintronics XII
Henri-Jean M. Drouhin; Jean-Eric Wegrowe; Manijeh Razeghi, Editor(s)