Robust Majorana Conductance Peaks for a Superconducting Lead

Physical Review Letters
Yang PengFelix von Oppen

Abstract

Experimental evidence for Majorana bound states largely relies on measurements of the tunneling conductance. While the conductance into a Majorana state is in principle quantized to 2e^{2}/h, observation of this quantization has been elusive, presumably due to temperature broadening in the normal-metal lead. Here, we propose to use a superconducting lead instead, whose gap strongly suppresses thermal excitations. For a wide range of tunneling strengths and temperatures, a Majorana state is then signaled by symmetric conductance peaks at eV=±Δ of a universal height G=(4-π)2e^{2}/h. For a superconducting scanning tunneling microscope tip, Majorana states appear as spatial conductance plateaus while the conductance varies with the local wave function for trivial Andreev bound states. We discuss effects of nonresonant (bulk) Andreev reflections and quasiparticle poisoning.

References

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Apr 7, 2010·Physical Review Letters·K T LawT K Ng
Jan 15, 2011·Physical Review Letters·Yuval OregFelix von Oppen
Nov 24, 2011·Physical Review Letters·Driss M BadianeJulia S Meyer
Jul 14, 2012·Reports on Progress in Physics·Jason Alicea
Nov 19, 2013·Physical Review Letters·Jelena KlinovajaDaniel Loss
Dec 3, 2013·Physical Review Letters·M M Vazifeh, M Franz
Dec 18, 2013·Nature Nanotechnology·Eduardo J H LeeSilvano De Franceschi
Mar 31, 2015·Physical Review Letters·Yang PengFelix von Oppen
Sep 5, 2015·Physical Review Letters·Michael RubyKatharina J Franke
Nov 21, 2015·Physical Review Letters·Michael RubyKatharina J Franke

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Citations

Jul 7, 2018·Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology·Alex ZazunovReinhold Egger
Jul 15, 2016·Physical Review. E·P D Sacramento
May 31, 2017·Journal of Physics. Condensed Matter : an Institute of Physics Journal·A S VasenkoE V Chulkov
Feb 18, 2017·Physical Review Letters·A ZazunovR Egger
May 23, 2018·Scientific Reports·Zhi WangXiao Hu

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