Quantum point contact as a probe of a topological superconductor
By Michael H. Wimmer, A. Akhmerov, J. Dahlhaus, C. Beenakker. 2011
173 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We calculate the conductance of a ballistic point contact to a superconducting wire, produced by the s-wave proximity effect in a semiconductor with spin–orbit coupling in a parallel magnetic field. The conductance G as a function of contact width or Fermi energy shows plateaux at half-integer multiples of 4e2/h if the superconductor is in a topologically nontrivial phase. In contrast, the plateaux are at the usual integer multiples in the topologically trivial phase. Disorder destroys all plateaux except the first, which remains precisely quantized, consistent with previous results for a tunnel contact. The advantage of a ballistic contact over a tunnel contact as a probe of the topological phase is the strongly reduced sensitivity to finite voltage or temperature.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c122575b983e56efa6f84945e3811072c40e8b8
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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
In Materials Chemistry
Citations in the corpus
- Search for Majorana Fermions in Superconductors (2011, background): “A ballistic point contact provides a more distinctive signature of the topologically nontrivial phase [92], through the half-integer conductance plateaus shown in Fig.”
- Reproducing topological properties with quasi-Majorana states (2018, background): “[11] Therefore, while a zero-bias conductance peak or conductance plateau quantized to 2e2/h does not distinguish quasi-Majorana states from topological Majorana states, a quantized zero-bias dip in the conductance in the open regime does.”