Phenomenology of Majorana zero modes in full-shell hybrid nanowires

Full-shell nanowires have been proposed as an alternative nanowire design in the search of topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes (MZMs). They are hybrid nanostructures consisting of a semiconductor core fully covered by a thin superconductor shell and subject to a magnetic flux. Compared to their partial-shell counterparts, full-shell nanowires present some advantages that could help to clearly identify the elusive Majorana quasiparticles, such as the operation at smaller magnetic fields and low or zero semiconductor g factor, and the expected appearance of MZMs at well-controlled regions of parameter space. In this paper we critically examine this proposal, finding a very rich spectral phenomenology that combines the Little-Parks modulation of the parent-gap superconductor with flux, the presence of flux-dispersing Caroli-de Gennes-Matricon (CdGM) analog subgap states, and the emergence of MZMs across finite flux intervals that depend on the transverse wavefunction profile of the charge density in the core section. Through microscopic simulations and analytical derivations, we study different regimes for the semiconductor core, ranging from the hollow-core approximation, to the tubular-core nanowire appropriate for a semiconductor tube with an insulating core, to the solid-core nanowire with the characteristic dome-shaped radial profile for the electrostatic potential inside the semiconductor. We compute the phase diagrams for the different models in cylindrical nanowires and find that MZMs typically coexist with CdGM analogs at zero energy, rendering them gapless. However, we also find topologically protected parameter regions or islands with gapped MZMs. In this sense, the most promising candidate to obtain topologically protected MZMs in a full-shell geometry is the nanowire with a tubular-shaped core. Moving beyond pristine nanowires, we study the effect of mode mixing perturbations. On the one hand, mode mixing can gap CdGM analogs and open minigaps around existing MZMs. On the other hand and rather strikingly, mode mixing can act like a topological p-wave pairing between particle-hole Bogoliubov partners, and is therefore able to create new topologically protected MZMs in regions of the phase diagram that were originally trivial. As a result, the phase diagram is utterly transformed and exhibits protected MZMs in around half of the parameter space. © 2024 American Physical Society.