No Arabic abstract
We study the transport properties of a superconductor-quantum spin Hall insulator-superconductor (S-QSHI-S) hybrid system in the presence of a microwave radiation. Instead of adiabatic analysis or using the resistively shunted junction model, we start from the microscopic Hamiltonian and calculate the DC current directly with the help of the non-equilibrium Greens Functions method. The numerical results show that (i) the I-V curves of background current due to multiple Andreev reflections (MAR) exhibit a different structure with that in the conventional junctions, (ii) all Shapiro steps are visible and appear one by one at high frequency, while at low frequency, the steps evolve exactly as the Bessel functions and the odd steps are completely suppressed, implying a fractional Josephson effect.
The fractional Josephson effect has been observed in many instances as a signature of a topological superconducting state containing zero-energy Majorana modes. We present a nontopological scenario which can produce a fractional Josephson effect generically in semiconductor-based Josephson junctions, namely, a resonant impurity bound state weakly coupled to a highly transparent channel. We show that the fractional ac Josephson effect can be generated by the Landau-Zener processes which flip the electron occupancy of the impurity bound state. The Josephson effect signature for Majorana modes become distinct from this nontopological scenario only at low frequency. We prove that a variant of the fractional ac Josephson effect, namely, the low-frequency doubled Shapiro steps, can provide a more reliable signature of the topological superconducting state.
We report on half-integer Shapiro steps observed in an InAs nanowire Josephson junction. We observed the Shapiro steps of the short ballistic InAs nanowire Josephson junction and found anomalous half-integer steps in addition to the conventional integer steps. The half-integer steps disappear as the temperature increases or transmission of the junction decreases. These experimental results agree closely with numerical calculation of the Shapiro response for the skewed current phase relation in a short ballistic Josephson junction.
The demonstration of the non-Abelian properties of Majorana bound states (MBS) is a crucial step toward topological quantum computing. We theoretically investigate how Majorana fusion rules manifest themselves in the current-voltage characteristics of a topological Josephson junction. The junction is built on U-shaped quantum spin Hall edges and hosts a Majorana qubit formed by four MBS. Owing to Majorana fusion rules, inter- and intra-edge couplings among adjacent MBS provide two orthogonal components in the rotation axis of the Majorana qubit. We show that the interplay of the dynamics of the superconductor phase difference and the Majorana qubit governs the Josephson effect. Strikingly, we identify sequential jumps of the voltage across the junction with increasing DC current bias without external AC driving. Its role is replaced by the intrinsic Rabi oscillations of the Majorana qubit. This phenomenon, DC Shapiro steps, is a manifestation of the non-trivial fusion rules of MBS.
We present a Josephson junction based on a Ge-Si core-shell nanowire with transparent superconducting Al contacts, a building block which could be of considerable interest for investigating Majorana bound states, superconducting qubits and Andreev (spin) qubits. We demonstrate the dc Josephson effect in the form of a finite supercurrent through the junction, and establish the ac Josephson effect by showing up to 23 Shapiro steps. We observe multiple Andreev reflections up to the sixth order, indicating that charges can scatter elastically many times inside our junction, and that our interfaces between superconductor and semiconductor are transparent and have low disorder.
Josephson junctions hosting Majorana fermions have been predicted to exhibit a 4$pi$ periodic current phase relation. The experimental consequence of this periodicity is the disappearance of odd steps in Shapiro steps experiments. Experimentally, missing odd Shapiro steps have been observed in a number of materials systems with strong spin-orbit coupling and have been interpreted in the context of topological superconductivity. Here, we report on missing odd steps in topologically trivial Josephson junctions fabricated on InAs quantum wells. We ascribe our observations to the high transparency of our junctions allowing Landau-Zener transitions. The probability of these processes is found to be independent of the drive frequency. We analyze our results using a bi-modal transparency distribution which demonstrates that only few modes carrying 4$pi$ periodic current are sufficient to describe the disappearance of odd steps. Our findings highlight the elaborate circumstances that have to be considered in the investigation of the 4$pi$ Josephson junctions in relationship to topological superconductivity.