Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cayao, Jorge
• San-Jose, Pablo
• Black-Schaffer, Annica M.
• Aguado, Ramón
• Prada, Elsa

Titel

Majorana splitting from critical currents in Josephson junctions

Ist Teil von

• Physical review. B, 2017-11, Vol.96 (20), Article 205425

Ort / Verlag

College Park: American Physical Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

American Physical Society Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A semiconducting nanowire with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling and coupled to a superconductor can be tuned by an external Zeeman field into a topological phase with Majorana zero modes. Here we theoretically investigate how this exotic topological superconductor phase manifests in Josephson junctions based on such proximitized nanowires. In particular, we focus on critical currents in the short junction limit (LN≪ξ, where LN is the junction length and ξ is the superconducting coherence length) and show that they contain important information about nontrivial topology and Majoranas. This includes signatures of the gap inversion at the topological transition and a unique oscillatory pattern that originates from Majorana interference. Interestingly, this pattern can be modified by tuning the transmission across the junction, thus providing complementary evidence of Majoranas and their energy splittings beyond standard tunnel spectroscopy experiments, while offering further tunability by virtue of the Josephson effect.