The Majorana zero mode in the semiconductor-superconductor nanowire is one of the promising candidates for topological quantum computing. Recently, in islands of nanowires, subgap-state energies have been experimentally observed to oscillate as a function of the magnetic field, showing a signature of overlapped Majorana bound states. However, the oscillation amplitude either dies away after an overshoot or decays, sharply opposite to the theoretically predicted enhanced oscillations for Majorana bound states. We reveal that a steplike distribution of spin-orbit coupling in realistic devices can induce the decaying Majorana oscillations, resulting from the coupling-induced energy repulsion between the quasiparticle spectra on the two sides of the step. This steplike spin-orbit coupling can also lead to decaying oscillations in the spectrum of the Andreev bound states. For Coulomb-blockade peaks mediated by the Majorana bound states, the peak spacings have been predicted to correlate with peak heights by a $π/2$ phase shift, which was ambiguous in recent experiments and may be explained by the steplike spin-orbit coupling. Our work will inspire more works to reexamine effects of the nonuniform spin-orbit coupling, which is generally present in experimental devices.
We study local and non-local transport across a two-leg long-range Kitaev ladder connected to two normal metal leads. We focus on the role of the constituent Majorana fermions and the subgap Andreev states. The double degeneracy of Majorana fermions of the individual legs of the ladder gets lifted by a coupling between the two leading to the formation of Andreev bound states. The coupling can be induced by a superconducting phase difference between the two legs of the ladder accompanied by a finite inter-leg hopping. Andreev bound states formed strongly enhance local Andreev reflection. When t…
Andreev bound states (ABSs) are localized quantum states that contain both electron and hole components. They ubiquitously reside in inhomogeneous superconducting systems. Following theoretical analysis, we propose to probe the electron-hole weights of an ABS via a local tunneling measurement that detects the transient current under a steplike pulse bias. With our protocol, the ABS energy level can also be obtained from peaks of the Fourier spectrum of the transient current. Our protocol can be applied to detect robust zero-energy Majorana bound states (MBSs), which have equal electron-hole we…
Excess photon-assisted noise of Majorana and Andreev bound states
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University（清华大学物理系低维量子物理国家重点实验室）；Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information（量子信息前沿科学中心）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）
One of the typical features of Majorana zero mode (MZM) at the end of topological superconductor is a zero-bias peak in the tunneling spectroscopy of the normal lead-superconductor junction. In this paper we study on a model with one phonon mode coupling to the superconductor lead of the normal lead-superconductor junction, which can be viewed as an electron-lead/phonon-coupled-MZM/hole-lead structure. The phonon-coupled MZM acts as a series of channels in which electron can turn into hole by absorbing and emitting phonons. These channels present in the local density of states (LDOS) as a seri…
Braiding Majorana zero modes (MZMs) is the key procedure toward topological quantum computation. We show such braiding can be well performed in a parallel semiconductor-superconductor nanowire structure. Considering the fact that the low-energy Andreev bound states (ABSs) usually mix with the MZMs in the present set-up, we further investigate the braiding properties of MZMs when an ABS is presented. Our numerical simulation suggests that ABS can be regarded as a pair of weakly coupled MZMs. The dynamical hybridization of MZMs plus the non-Abelian braiding of MZMs would induce an arbitrary rota…
Hybrid system composed by a semiconducting nanowire with proximity-induced superconductivity and a quantum dot at the end working as spectrometer was recently used to quantify the so-called degree of Majorana nonlocality [Deng et al., Phys.Rev.B, 98, 085125 (2018)]. Here we demonstrate that spin-resolved density of states of the dot responsible for zero-bias conductance peak strongly depends on the separation between the Majorana bound states (MBSs) and their relative couplings with the dot and investigate how the charging energy affects the spectrum of the system in the distinct scenarios of …
We investigate the low-energy theory of a one-dimensional finite capacitance topological Josephson junction. Charge fluctuations across the junction couple to resonant microwave fields and can be used to probe microscopic excitations such as Majorana and Andreev bound states. This marriage between localized microscopic degrees of freedom and macroscopic dynamics of the superconducting phase, leads to unique spectroscopic patterns which allow us to reveal the presence of Majorana fermions among the low-lying excitations.
Majorana bound states (MBS) and Andreev bound states (ABS) in realistic Majorana nanowires setups have similar experimental signatures which make them hard to distinguishing one from the other. Here, we characterize the continuous Majorana/Andreev crossover interpolating between fully-separated, partially-separated, and fully-overlapping Majorana modes, in terms of global and local topological invariants, fermion parity, quasiparticle densities, Majorana pseudospin and spin polarizations, density overlaps and transition probabilities between opposite Majorana components. We found that in inhom…
We propose a three-terminal structure to probe robust signatures of Majorana zero modes. This structure consists of a quantum dot coupled to the normal metal, s-wave superconducting and Majorana Y-junction leads. The zero-bias differential conductance at zero temperature of the normal-metal lead peaks at $2e^{2}/h$, which will be deflected after Majorana braiding. This quantized conductance can entirely arise from the Majorana-induced crossed Andreev reflection, protected by the energy gap of the superconducting lead. We find that the effect of thermal broadening is significantly suppressed wh…
Detection of the fusion rule of Majorana zero-modes is a near-term milestone on the road to topological quantum computation. An obstacle is that the non-deterministic fusion outcome of topological zero-modes can be mimicked by the merging of non-topological Andreev levels. To distinguish these two scenarios, we search for dynamical signatures of the ground-state degeneracy that is the defining property of non-Abelian anyons. By adiabatically traversing parameter space along two different pathways one can identify ground-state degeneracies from the breakdown of adiabaticity. We show that the ap…
Quantifying the non-Abelian property of Andreev bound states in inhomogeneous Majorana nanowires
School of Physics, MOE Key Laboratory for Non-equilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, Xi’an Jiaotong University（西安交通大学物理学院，非平衡合成与调控凝聚态物质教育部重点实验室）；Interdisciplinary Center for Theoretical Physics and Information Sciences, Fudan University（复旦大学理论物理与信息科学交叉中心）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University（北京大学物理学院量子材料国际中心）
Each end of a Kitaev chain in topological phase hosts a Majorana fermion. Zero bias conductance peak is an evidence of Majorana fermion when the two Majorana fermions are decoupled. These two Majorana fermions are separated in space and this nonlocal aspect can be probed when the two are coupled. Crossed Andreev reflection is the evidence of the nonlocality of Majorana fermions. Nonlocality of Majorana fermions has been proposed to be probed by noise measurements since simple conductance measurements cannot probe it due to the almost cancellation of currents from electron tunneling and crossed…
Robust topologically trivial low-energy Andreev bound states (ABSs) induced by position-dependent effective potentials have recently come under renewed focus, in light of a remarkable set of experiments observing robust quantized zero-bias conductance plateaus in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. We show that (1) the partial spatial separation of the wave functions of the component Majorana bound states (MBSs) is crucial for the creation and stability of topologically trivial near-zero-energy Andreev bound states, (2) the signs of the spin polarizations of the component MBSs can b…
In modern experiments with hybrid superconducting (SC)/semiconducting nanowires the presence of zero-energy Andreev bound states (ABSs), characterized by a partial overlap of the Majorana wave functions, is a common problem that significantly complicates the detection of a genuine Majorana bound state (MBS). In this article, taking into account spatial inhomogeneity of experimentally investigated nanowire samples, we study interference transport features of a curved heterostructure in which two normal wires (or arms) are separated by a superconducting wire. Since Andreev reflection on the two …
The Majorana search is caught up in an extensive debate about the false-positive signals from non-topological Andreev bound states (ABSs). We introduce a remedy using the dissipative probe to generate electron-boson interaction. We theoretically show that the interaction-induced renormalization leads to significantly distinct universal zero-bias conductance behaviors, i.e. distinct characteristic power-law in temperature, for different types of Andreev reflections, which shows a sharp contrast to that of a Majorana zero mode. Various specific cases have been studied, including the cases that t…
Hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowires are predicted to host Majorana zero modes, manifested as zero-bias peaks (ZBPs) in tunneling conductance. ZBPs alone, however, are not sufficient evidence due to the ubiquitous presence of Andreev bound states in the same system. Here, we implement a strongly resistive normal lead in our InAs-Al nanowire devices and show that most of the expected ZBPs, corresponding to zero-energy Andreev bound states, can be suppressed, a phenomenon known as environmental Coulomb blockade. Our result is the first experimental demonstration of this dissipative inte…
We show theoretically that in the generic finite chemical potential situation, the clean superconducting spin-orbit-coupled nanowire has two distinct nontopological regimes as a function of Zeeman splitting (below the topological quantum phase transition): one is characterized by finite-energy in-gap Andreev bound states, while the other has only extended bulk states. The Andreev bound state regime is characterized by strong features in the tunneling spectra creating a "gap closure" signature, but no "gap reopening" signature should be apparent above the topological quantum phase transition, i…
A semiconducting nanowire fully wrapped by a superconducting shell has been proposed as a platform for obtaining Majorana modes at small magnetic fields. In this study, we demonstrate that the appearance of subgap states in such structures is actually governed by the junction region in tunneling spectroscopy measurements, and not the full-shell nanowire itself. Short tunneling regions never show subgap states, whereas longer junctions always do. This can be understood in terms of quantum dots forming in the junction and hosting Andreev levels in the Yu-Shiba-Rusinov regime. The intricate magne…
We study quasiparticle spectrum of the correlated quantum dot deposited on superconducting substrate which is side-coupled to the Rashba nanochain, hosting Majorana end modes. Ground state of an isolated quantum dot proximitized to superconducting reservoirs is represented either by the singly occupied site or BCS-type superposition of the empty and doubly occupied configurations. Quantum phase transition between these distinct ground states is spectroscopically manifested by the in-gap Andreev states which cross each other at the Fermi level. This qualitatively affects leakage of the Majorana…
We study the topological phase diagram of a setup composed of two nanowires with strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction subjected to an external magnetic field and brought into the proximity to a bulk $s$-wave superconductor in the presence of a supercurrent flowing through it. The supercurrent reduces the critical values of the Zeeman energy and crossed Andreev superconducting pairing required to reach the topological phase characterized by the presence of one Majorana bound state localized at each system end. We demonstrate that, even in the regime of the crossed Andreev pairing being smaller …
Topological quantum computation encodes quantum information nonlocally by nucleating non-Abelian anyons separated by distances $L$, typically spanning the qubit device size. This nonlocality renders topological qubits exponentially immune to dephasing from all sources of classical noise with operator support local on the scale of $L$. We perform detailed analytical and numerical analyses of a time-domain Ramsey-type protocol for noisy Majorana-based qubits that is designed to validate this coveted topological protection in near-term devices such as the so-called `tetron' design. By assessing d…
Photon-assisted tunneling frequently provides detailed information on the underlying charge-transfer process. In particular, the Tien-Gordon approach and its extensions predict that the sideband spacing in bias voltage is a direct fingerprint of the number of electrons transferred in a single tunneling event. Here, we analyze photon-assisted tunneling into subgap states in superconductors in the limit of small temperatures and bias voltages where tunneling is dominated by resonant Andreev processes and does not conform to the predictions of simple Tien-Gordon theory. Our analysis is based on a…
Andreev bound states versus Majorana bound states in quantum dot-nanowire-superconductor hybrid structures: Trivial versus topological zero-bias conductance peaks
受最近一项重要实验的启发[Deng et al.，Science 354，1557（2016）]，我们理论上考虑了具有邻近诱导超导（SC）、自旋轨道耦合和塞曼分裂的量子点-纳米线半导体系统中Andreev束缚态（ABS）和Majorana束缚态（MBS）之间的相互作用。点诱导的SC纳米线中的ABS表现出复杂的行为作为塞曼分裂和化学势的函数，具体的问题是两个这样的ABS是否可以走到一起形成拓扑MBS。我们认为物理的情况下，涉及的点是非SC，SC，或部分SC。我们发现，ABS确实倾向于合并在一起产生近零能量的中间带隙状态塞曼分裂和/或化学势的增加，但这主要发生在非拓扑制度，虽然有情况下，ABS可以走到一起形成一个拓扑MBS。这两种情况（两个ABS形成一个近零能量的非拓扑ABS或零能量的拓扑MBS）是难以区分的隧道电导光谱由于基本上相同的签名。理论上，我们通过知道拓扑量子相变的临界塞曼分裂或通过计算拓扑可见性来区分它们。我们发现，“粘在一起”的倾向ABS产生一个零能量的midgap状态是通用的D类系统，本身并没有说的拓扑性质的底层SC纳米线。在解释隧穿电导测量时必须谨慎，其中ABS的中间间隙粘在一起的行为不能被解释为具有非阿贝尔MBS的拓扑SC的确定性证据。我们还提出了一些实验技术区分平凡和拓扑ZBCP。
