Tunable effective length of fractional Josephson junctions

Abstract

Topological Josephson junctions (TJJs) have been a subject of widespread interest due to their hosting of Majorana zero modes. In long junctions, i.e. junctions where the junction length exceeds the superconducting coherence length, TJJs manifest themselves in specific features of the critical current (Beenakker 2013 Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 017003). Here we propose to couple the helical edge states mediating the TJJ to additional channels or quantum dots, by which the effective junction length can be increased by tunable parameters associated with these couplings, so that such measurements become possible even in short junctions. Besides effective low-energy models that we treat analytically, we investigate realizations by a Kane–Mele model with edge passivation and treat them numerically via tight binding models. In each case, we explicitly calculate the critical current using the Andreev bound state spectrum and show that it differs in effectively long junctions in the cases of strong and weak parity changing perturbations (quasiparticle poisoning).