Majorana quasiparticles of an inhomogeneous Rashba chain

We investigate the inhomogeneous Rashba chain coupled to a superconducting substrate, hosting the Majorana quasiparticles near its edges. We discuss its subgap spectrum and study how robust the zero-energy quasiparticles are against the diagonal and off-diagonal disorder. Studying the Z2 topological invariant we show that disorder-induced transition from the topologically nontrivial to trivial phases is manifested by characteristic features in the spatially resolved quasiparticle spectrum at zero energy. We provide evidence for the nonlocal nature of the zero-energy Majorana quasiparticles that are well preserved upon partitioning the chain into separate pieces. Even though the Majorana quasiparticles are not completely immune to inhomogeneity, we show that they can spread onto other (normal) nanoscopic objects via the proximity effect.