Conductance of a Finite Kitaev Chain

Abstract

We present a stochastic formulation of the Keldysh theory to calculate the conductance of a finite Kitaev chain coupled to two electron reservoirs. We study the dependence of the conductance on the number of sites in the chain and find that only for sufficiently long chains and in the regime that the chain is a topological superconducter the conductance at both ends tends to the universal value $2e^2/h$, as expected on the basis of the contact resistance of a single conducting channel provided by the Majorana zero mode. In this topologically nontrivial case we find an exponential decay of the current inside the chain and a simple analytical expression for the decay length. Finally, we also study the differential conductance at nonzero bias and the full current-voltage curves. We find a nonmonotonic behavior of the maximal current through the Kitaev chain as a function of the coupling strength with the reservoirs.

10 pages, 13 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Linear and non-linear transport across a finite Kitaev chain: an exact analytical study
• Role of dephasing on the conductance signatures of Majorana zero modes
• Analytical results for Green's functions of lattice fermions
• Topological phase transition driven by magnetic field in one-dimensional topological superconductor rings
• Full counting statistics of the currents through a Kitaev chain and the exchange fluctuation theorem