Coulomb-interaction-induced Majorana edge modes in nanowires

We show that Majorana edge modes appear in a strongly correlated phase of semiconducting nanowires with discrete rotational symmetry in the cross section. These modes exist in the absence of spin-orbit coupling, magnetic fields, and superconductivity. They appear purely due to the combination of the three-dimensional Coulomb interaction and orbital physics, which generates a topological gap in one sector of the excitation spectrum as well as a topological ground-state degeneracy. The gap can be comparable in magnitude to the topological superconducting gap in other solid-state candidate systems for Majorana edge modes and may similarly be probed via tunnel spectroscopy.