Proposed Detection of the Topological Phase in Ring-Shaped Semiconductor-Superconductor Nanowires Using Coulomb Blockade Transport

Abstract

In semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures a topological phase transition is expected as a function of chemical potential or magnetic field strength. We show that signatures of this transition can be observed in nonlinear Coulomb blockade transport through a ring shaped structure. In particular, for a fixed electron parity of the ring, the flux periodicity of the neutral excitation spectrum changes from the usual h/2e periodicity to a characteristic h/e periodicity when tuning the system from the topologically trivial to the nontrivial phase. We relate the h/e periodicity to the recently predicted 4πperiodicity of the Josephson current across a junction formed by two topological superconductors.

5 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Search for Majorana fermions in superconductors
• Modulation of Majorana-Induced Current Cross-Correlations by Quantum Dots
• Signatures of topological phase transitions in mesoscopic superconducting rings
• Detecting topological superconductivity using low-frequency doubled Shapiro steps
• Magnetic Flux Periodicity in Second Order Topological Superconductors
• Proposal for measuring the parity anomaly in a topological superconductor ring
• Edge states, Majorana fermions and topological order in superconducting wires with generalized boundary conditions
• Robustness of Topological Order in Semiconductor-Superconductor Nanowires in the Coulomb Blockade Regime