Zero-bias peaks and the search for Majorana particles

This talk will review recent experiments reporting zero-bias features in semiconductor nanowires and quantum dots, and will attempt to summarize where things stand in the search for Majorana fermions. The challenge in these experiments is separating various sources of zero-bias conductance peaks, and continuing to refine experiment, theory, and numerical approaches to remove ambiguities in the experimental signatures. So far, in my opinion, the data does not lock in the Majorana interpretation, but there are many tantalizing features that need to be looked at further. Our own work on the topic is Refs. [1,2]. These experiments will be put in a larger context here.

1. W. Chang, V. E. Manucharyan, T. S. Jespersen, J. Nygard, C. M. Marcus, Tunneling Spectroscopy of Quasiparticle Bound States in a Spinful Josephson Junction, arXiv cond-mat.mes-hall, 1–5 (2012).

2. H. O. H. Churchill et al., Superconductor-Nanowire Devices from Tunneling to the Multichannel Regime: Zero-Bias Oscillations and Magnetoconductance Crossover, arXiv cond-mat.mes-hall (2013).