Majorana physics in hybrid nanowires, topological phases and transport

Thesis defended on Nov. 9, 2016, 11:30 a.m.

Jury: Gloria Platero (pres., ICMM, Madrid), Ramón Aguado (ICMM, Madrid), Sebastián Bergeret (DIPC, Donostia-San Sebastián)

It is believed that it is possible to engineer devices able to hold Majoranas in the form of collective electronic excitations. These collective excitations would have the fundamental Majorana property of being created and annihilated in equal pairs albeit they would not be fermions like their particle physics equivalents but non-abelian anyons. From the many theoretical proposals of systems able to hold Majoranas this thesis is devoted to the study of Majorana modes in hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowires. Majoranas were originally theorized for purely 1d closed nanowires but this can not be easily achieved in real physical systems.In this thesis we take care of extending the 1d model to more general ones that take into consideration some realistic effects and we also study the Majorana transport properties in themselves. To do this we use a combination of different numerical and analytical methods that have allowed us to uncover a whole new set of Majorana features previously unknown.