Conductance fingerprint of Majorana fermions in the topological Kondo effect

Abstract

We consider an interacting nanowire/superconductor heterostructure attached to metallic leads. The device is described by an unusual low-energy model involving spin-1 conduction electrons coupled to a nonlocal spin-1/2 Kondo impurity built from Majorana fermions. The topological origin of the resulting Kondo effect is manifest in distinctive non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) behavior, and the existence of Majorana fermions in the device is demonstrated unambiguously by distinctive conductance lineshapes. We study the physics of the model in detail, using the numerical renormalization group, perturbative scaling and abelian bosonization. In particular, we calculate the full scaling curves for the differential conductance in AC and DC fields, onto which experimental data should collapse. Scattering t-matrices and thermodynamic quantities are also calculated, recovering asymptotes from conformal field theory. We show that the NFL physics is robust to asymmetric Majorana-lead couplings, and here we uncover a duality between strong and weak coupling. The NFL behavior is understood physically in terms of competing Kondo effects. The resulting frustration is relieved by inter-Majorana coupling which generates a second crossover to a regular Fermi liquid.

17 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (20)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
• Majorana Fermions and a Topological Phase Transition in Semiconductor-Superconductor Heterostructures
• Evidence of Majorana fermions in an Al - InAs nanowire topological superconductor
• Observation of Majorana Fermions in a Nb-InSb Nanowire-Nb Hybrid Quantum Device
• The numerical renormalization group method for quantum impurity systems
• Non-Abelian quantum order in spin-orbit-coupled semiconductors: The search for topological Majorana particles in solid state systems
• Real-time dynamics in Quantum Impurity Systems: A Time-dependent Numerical Renormalization Group Approach
• Sum-rule Conserving Spectral Functions from the Numerical Renormalization Group
• Towards a realistic transport modeling in a superconducting nanowire with Majorana fermions
• A Numerical Renormalization Group approach to Green's Functions for Quantum Impurity Models
• Topological Kondo effect with Majorana fermions
• Anyonic interferometry without anyons: How a flux qubit can read out a topological qubit
• Universal quantum computation on a semiconductor quantum wire network
• Properties of anisotropic magnetic impurities on surfaces
• Universal low-temperature crossover in two-channel Kondo models
• Quantum spins on star graphs and the Kondo model
• Transport properties of the Coulomb-Majorana junction
• Strong vs. Weak Coupling Duality and Coupling Dependence of the Kondo Temperature in the Two-Channel Kondo Model

Cited by in corpus (48)

• Next steps of quantum transport in Majorana nanowire devices
• Exact ground states and topological order in interacting Kitaev/Majorana chains
• Majorana nanowires for topological quantum computation
• Generalized Wilson Chain for solving multichannel quantum impurity problems
• Quantum simulation of an exotic quantum critical point in a two-site charge Kondo circuit
• Interleaved numerical renormalization group as an efficient multiband impurity solver
• Kondo and Majorana signatures near the singlet-doublet quantum phase transition
• Bethe ansatz solution of the topological Kondo model
• Tunneling spectroscopy of Majorana-Kondo devices
• Non-Fermi liquid manifold in a Majorana device
• Violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in the Topological Kondo model
• Wiedemann-Franz law in a non-Fermi liquid and Majorana central charge: Thermoelectric transport in a two-channel Kondo system
• Recent progress on Majorana in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures--Engineering and detection
• Electron Teleportation in Multi-Terminal Majorana Islands: Statistical Transmutation and Fractional Quantum Conductance
• Exact nonequilibrium transport in the topological Kondo effect
• Many-terminal Majorana island: from Topological to Multi-Channel Kondo Model
• Kondo physics from quasiparticle poisoning in Majorana devices
• From four- to two-channel Kondo effect in junctions of XY spin chains
• Holographic optical traps for atom-based topological Kondo devices
• Enhanced current noise correlations in a Coulomb-Majorana device
• Josephson junctions in double nanowires bridged by in-situ deposited superconductors
• Phase Diagram and Entanglement of two interacting topological Kitaev chains
• Parafermionic generalization of the topological Kondo effect
• Topological Kondo Device for distinguishing Quasi-Majorana and Majorana signatures
• Multichannel charge Kondo effect and non-Fermi liquid fixed points in conventional and topological superconductor islands
• Tunable spin/charge Kondo effect at a double superconducting island connected to two spinless quantum wires
• $6\pi$ Josephson effect in Majorana box devices
• ABCD of Kondo effect
• Quantum thermoelectric and heat transport in the overscreened Kondo regime: Exact conformal field theory results
• Dual fermionic variables and renormalization group approach to junctions of strongly interacting quantum wires
• Probing Majorana zero modes by measuring transport through an interacting magnetic impurity
• Two-Channel Kondo Physics in a Majorana Island Coupled to a Josephson Junction
• Non-Kondo many-body physics in a Majorana-based Kondo type system
• Signatures of topological ground state degeneracy in Majorana islands
• Interference and parity blockade in transport through a Majorana box
• Multichannel topological Kondo effect
• Quantum transport in coupled Majorana box systems
• Non-Equilibrium Charge Dynamics in Majorana-Josephson Devices
• The topological Kondo model out of equilibrium
• Critical Quantum Sensing: a tutorial on parameter estimation near quantum phase transitions
• Screening cloud and non-Fermi-liquid scattering in topological Kondo devices
• Simulating exotic phases of matter with bond-directed interactions with arrays of Majorana-Cooper pair boxes
• Relevance of Anisotropy in the Kondo Effect: Lessons From the Symplectic Case
• Interplay between pairing and correlations in spin-polarized bound states
• Embedded Majorana Islands
• Catalog of cubic, symmetry-protected, non-Fermi liquid, Kondo-type exchange models for doublet impurities
• Mean Field Decoupling of Single Impurity Anderson Model through Auxiliary Majorana Fermions
• A mesoscopic device for a realization of the Topological Kondo effect