Transport properties of a hybrid Majorana wire-quantum dot system with ferromagnetic contacts

Abstract

The transport properties of a quantum dot coupled to ferromagnetic contacts and attached to a topological superconductor wire hosting Majorana zero-energy modes at its ends are studied theoretically in the Kondo regime. By using the numerical renormalization group method, the temperature and dot level dependence of the spectral function, the conductance, and its spin polarization are studied for different coupling strengths to a topological superconductor. It is shown that the transport characteristics are generally determined by the interplay of three competing energy scales, resulting from Kondo correlations, a ferromagnetic-lead-induced exchange field, and topological-wire-induced splitting. These two splittings are found to have opposite signs. Moreover, they can compensate for each other in an appropriate parameter regime.