Abstract
In this minireview, we outline the recent experimental and theoretical progress in the creation, characterization and manipulation of Majorana bound states (MBSs) in semiconductor-superconductor (SC) hybrid structures. After an introductory overview of the broader field we specifically focus on four of our recent projects in this direction. We show that the emergence of Fano resonances in the differential conductance in a normal lead-Majorana nanowire-quantum dot setup can be exploited to determine if a single MBS is contacted by the normal lead and the quantum dot providing an experimental test of the non-locality of MBSs. In the second project, the tunnel-coupling to two MBSs in an s-wave SC-Majorana nanowire Josephson junction (JJ) leads to a finite contribution of the MBSs to the equilibrium Josephson current probing directly the local spin-singlet contribution of the Majorana pair. We then shift our focus from MBSs forming in nanowire systems to MBSs forming in topological JJs. In a single sheet of buckled silicene with proximity induced superconductivity two local electric fields can be used to tune the junction between a topologically trivial and topologically non-trivial regime. In a Corbino geometry topological Josephson junction two MBSs harbored in Josephson vortices can rotate along the JJ and, in the course of this, will be exchanged periodically in the phase difference of the JJ. The tunneling current in a metal tip coupled to the JJ is shown to exhibit signs of the anyonic braiding phase of two MBSs.
Highlights
The European Physical Journal Special Topics superconducting hybrid junctions
We discuss four projects where we propose specific ways to characterize and manipulate Majorana bound states (MBSs) in transport setups contributing towards the goal of using such non-Abelian zero modes for qubits in topological quantum computation (TQC)
We briefly discussed their potential as topologically protected qubits owing to their non-Abelian braiding statistics
Summary
The European Physical Journal Special Topics superconducting hybrid junctions. We discuss four projects where we propose specific ways to characterize and manipulate MBSs in transport setups contributing towards the goal of using such non-Abelian zero modes for qubits in topological quantum computation (TQC). One of the main issues is the distinction of true isolated MBSs from the conventional Andreev bound states that are Dirac fermions with Majorana components that are not efficiently delocalized (e.g. by the length of a nanowire) and can appear in trivial systems [114,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126] They are sometimes dubbed quasi-MBSs. They are sometimes dubbed quasi-MBSs Despite this difference, they can mimic the essential features of true MBSs including conductance quantization, the fractional Josephson effect and even braiding [115, 118,123]. Experimental strategies to discriminate quasi-MBSs from true MBSs is to perform non-local measurements [51,121,127] which seems one of the steps that should be feasible to do in the near future [128]
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