No Arabic abstract
We study a time-reversal-invariant topological superconductor island hosting spatially separated Majorana Kramers pairs, with weak tunnel couplings to two s-wave superconducting leads. When the topological superconductor island is in the Coulomb blockade regime, we predict that a Josephson current flows between the two leads due to a non-local transfer of Cooper pairs mediated by the Majorana Kramers pairs. Interestingly, we find that the sign of the Josephson current is controlled by the joint parity of all four Majorana bound states on the island. Consequently, this parity-controlled Josephson effect can be used for qubit read-out in Majorana-based quantum computing.
We propose a universal gate set acting on a qubit formed by the degenerate ground states of a Coulomb-blockaded time-reversal invariant topological superconductor island with spatially separated Majorana Kramers pairs: the Majorana Kramers Qubit. All gate operations are implemented by coupling the Majorana Kramers pairs to conventional superconducting leads. Interestingly, in such an all-superconducting device, the energy gap of the leads provides another layer of protection from quasiparticle poisoning independent of the island charging energy. Moreover, the absence of strong magnetic fields - which typically reduce the superconducting gap size of the island - suggests a unique robustness of our qubit to quasiparticle poisoning due to thermal excitations. Consequently, the Majorana Kramers Qubit should benefit from prolonged coherence times and may provide an alternative route to a Majorana-based quantum computer.
The Josephson supercurrent through the hybrid Majorana--quantum dot--Majorana junction is investigated. We particularly analyze the effect of spin-selective coupling between the Majorana and quantum dot states, which emerges only in the topological phase and will influence the current through bent junctions and/or in the presence of magnetic fields in the quantum dot. We find that the characteristic behaviors of the supercurrent through this system are quite counterintuitive, remarkably differing from the resonant tunneling, e.g., through the similar (normal phase) superconductor--quantum dot--superconductor junction. Our analysis is carried out under the influence of full set-up parameters and for both the $2pi$ and $4pi$ periodic currents. The present study is expected to be relevant to future exploration of applications of the Majorana-nanowire circuits.
We propose a tunable topological Josephson junction in silicene where electrostatic gates could switch between a trivial and a topological junction. These aspects are a consequence of a tunable phase transition of the topologically confined valley-chiral states from a spin-degenerate to a spin-helical regime. We calculate the Andreev bound states in such a junction analytically using a low-energy approximation to the tight-binding model of silicene in proximity to s-wave superconductors as well as numerically in the short- and long-junction regime and in the presence of intervalley scattering. Combining topologically trivial and non-trivial regions, we show how intervalley scattering can be effectively switched on and off within the Josephson junction. This constitutes a topological Josephson junction with an electrically tunable quasiparticle poisoning source.
Time-reversal invariant topological superconductors are characterized by the presence of Majorana Kramers pairs localized at defects. One of the transport signatures of Majorana Kramers pairs is the quantized differential conductance of $4e^2/h$ when such a one-dimensional superconductor is coupled to a normal-metal lead. The resonant Andreev reflection, responsible for this phenomenon, can be understood as the boundary condition change for lead electrons at low energies. In this paper, we study the stability of the Andreev reflection fixed point with respect to electron-electron interactions in the Luttinger liquid. We first calculate the phase diagram for the Luttinger liquid-Majorana Kramers pair junction and show that its low-energy properties are determined by Andreev reflection scattering processes in the spin-triplet channel, i.e. the corresponding Andreev boundary conditions are similar to that in a spin-triplet superconductor - normal lead junction. We also study here a quantum dot coupled to a normal lead and a Majorana Kramers pair and investigate the effect of local repulsive interactions leading to an interplay between Kondo and Majorana correlations. Using a combination of renormalization group analysis and slave-boson mean-field theory, we show that the system flows to a new fixed point which is controlled by the Majorana interaction rather than the Kondo coupling. This Majorana fixed point is characterized by correlations between the localized spin and the fermion parity of each spin sector of the topological superconductor. We investigate the stability of the Majorana phase with respect to Gaussian fluctuations.
High density superconductor-semiconductor-superconductor junctions have a small induced superconducting gap due to the quasiparticle trajectories with a large momentum parallel to the junction having a very long flight time. Because a large induced gap protects Majorana modes, these long trajectories constrain Majorana devices to a low electron density. We show that a zigzag-shaped geometry eliminates these trajectories, allowing the robust creation of Majorana states with both the induced gap $E_textrm{gap}$ and the Majorana size $xi_textrm{M}$ improved by more than an order of magnitude for realistic parameters. In addition to the improved robustness of Majoranas, this new zigzag geometry is insensitive to the geometric details and the device tuning.