Absence of supercurrent sign reversal in a topological junction with a quantum dot

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

Experimental techniques to verify Majoranas are of current interest. A prominent test is the effect of Majoranas on the Josephson current between two wires linked via a normal junction. Here, we study the case of a quantum dot connecting the two superconductors and the sign of the supercurrent in the trivial and topological regimes under grand-canonical equilibrium conditions, explicitly allowing for parity changes due to, e.g., quasiparticle poisoning. We find that the well-known supercurrent reversal for odd occupancy of the quantum dot (π junction) in the trivial case does not occur in the presence of Majoranas in the wires. However, we also find this to be a mere consequence of Majoranas being zero energy states. Therefore, the lack of supercurrent sign reversal can also be caused by trivial bound states and is thus not a discriminating signature of Majoranas.

Original languageEnglish
Article number014512
JournalPhysical Review B
Volume101
Issue number1
Number of pages9
ISSN2469-9950
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jan 2020

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 242668059