| CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PHYSICS AND RELATED AREAS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY |
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Hard Superconducting Gap in PbTe Nanowires |
| Yichun Gao1†, Wenyu Song1†, Shuai Yang1†, Zehao Yu1, Ruidong Li1, Wentao Miao1, Yuhao Wang1, Fangting Chen1, Zuhan Geng1, Lining Yang1, Zezhou Xia1, Xiao Feng1,2,3,4, Yunyi Zang2,4, Lin Li2, Runan Shang2,4, Qi-Kun Xue1,2,3,4,5, Ke He1,2,3,4*, and Hao Zhang1,2,3* |
1State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
3Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing 100084, China
4Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei 230088, China
5Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
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Yichun Gao, Wenyu Song, Shuai Yang et al 2024 Chin. Phys. Lett. 41 038502 |
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Abstract Semiconductor nanowires coupled to a superconductor provide a powerful testbed for quantum device physics such as Majorana zero modes and gate-tunable hybrid qubits. The performance of these quantum devices heavily relies on the quality of the induced superconducting gap. A hard gap, evident as vanishing subgap conductance in tunneling spectroscopy, is both necessary and desired. A hard gap has been achieved and extensively studied before in III–V semiconductor nanowires (InAs and InSb). In this study, we present the observation of a hard superconducting gap in PbTe nanowires coupled to a superconductor Pb. The gap size $\varDelta$ is $\sim$ 1 meV (maximally 1.3 meV in one device). Additionally, subgap Andreev bound states can also be created and controlled through gate tuning. Tuning a device into the open regime can reveal Andreev enhancement of the subgap conductance. These results pave the way for diverse superconducting quantum devices based on PbTe nanowires.
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Received: 22 December 2023
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Published: 12 March 2024
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