Electrical detection of the Majorana fusion rule for chiral edge vortices in a topological superconductor
C. W. J. Beenakker, A. Grabsch, Y. Herasymenko
SciPost Phys. 6, 022 (2019) · published 11 February 2019
- doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.6.2.022
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Abstract
Majorana zero-modes bound to vortices in a topological superconductor have a non-Abelian exchange statistics expressed by a non-deterministic fusion rule: When two vortices merge they may or they may not produce an unpaired fermion with equal probability. Building on a recent proposal to inject edge vortices in a chiral mode by means of a Josephson junction, we show how the fusion rule manifests itself in an electrical measurement. A $2\pi$ phase shift at a pair of Josephson junctions creates a topological qubit in a state of even-even fermion parity, which is transformed by the chiral motion of the edge vortices into an equal-weight superposition of even-even and odd-odd fermion parity. Fusion of the edge vortices at a second pair of Josephson junctions results in a correlated charge transfer of zero or one electron per cycle, such that the current at each junction exhibits shot noise, but the difference of the currents is nearly noiseless.
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