Interference and parity blockade in transport through a Majorana box

Abstract

A Majorana box---two topological superconducting nanowires coupled via a trivial superconductor---is a building block in devices aiming to demonstrate non-Abelian physics, as well as for topological quantum computer architectures. We theoretically investigate charge transport through a Majorana box and show that current can be blocked when two Majoranas couple to the same lead, fixing their parity. In direct analogy to a Pauli spin blockade in spin qubits, this parity blockade can be used for fast and high-fidelity qubit initialization and readout, as well as for current-based measurements of decoherence times. Furthermore, we demonstrate that transport can distinguish between a clean Majorana box and a disordered box with additional unwanted Majorana or Andreev bound states.