Electron-Tunneling-Assisted Non-Abelian Braiding of Rotating Majorana Bound States

authored by: Sunghun Park, H. S. Sim, Patrik Recher
Abstract: It has been argued that fluctuations of fermion parity are harmful for the demonstration of non-Abelian anyonic statistics. Here, we demonstrate a striking exception in which such fluctuations are actively used. We present a theory of coherent electron transport from a tunneling tip into a Corbino geometry Josephson junction where four Majorana bound states (MBSs) rotate. While the MBSs rotate, electron tunneling happens from the tip to one of the MBSs thereby changing the fermion parity of the MBSs. The tunneling events in combination with the rotation allow us to identify a novel braiding operator that does not commute with the braiding cycles in the absence of tunneling, revealing the non-Abelian nature of MBSs. The time-averaged tunneling current exhibits resonances as a function of the tip voltage with a period that is a direct consequence of the interference between the noncommuting braiding operations. Our work opens up a possibility for utilizing parity nonconserving processes to control non-Abelian states.
External Organisation(s): Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Technische Universität Braunschweig
Type: Article
Journal: Physical review letters
Volume: 125
ISSN: 0031-9007
Publication date: 28.10.2020
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Physics and Astronomy(all)
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.187702 (Access: Unknown)

BibTeX

@article{432f712bc1a34da6bcc4bc1d4ee947ad,
title = "Electron-Tunneling-Assisted Non-Abelian Braiding of Rotating Majorana Bound States",
abstract = "It has been argued that fluctuations of fermion parity are harmful for the demonstration of non-Abelian anyonic statistics. Here, we demonstrate a striking exception in which such fluctuations are actively used. We present a theory of coherent electron transport from a tunneling tip into a Corbino geometry Josephson junction where four Majorana bound states (MBSs) rotate. While the MBSs rotate, electron tunneling happens from the tip to one of the MBSs thereby changing the fermion parity of the MBSs. The tunneling events in combination with the rotation allow us to identify a novel braiding operator that does not commute with the braiding cycles in the absence of tunneling, revealing the non-Abelian nature of MBSs. The time-averaged tunneling current exhibits resonances as a function of the tip voltage with a period that is a direct consequence of the interference between the noncommuting braiding operations. Our work opens up a possibility for utilizing parity nonconserving processes to control non-Abelian states.",
author = "Sunghun Park and Sim, {H. S.} and Patrik Recher",
note = "Funding information: We thank A. Levy Yeyati for helpful discussion. S. P. is supported by the Spanish MINECO through the “Mar{\'i}a de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2014-0377). P. R. acknowledges financial support from the Lower Saxony PhD-programme “Contacts in Nanosystems”, the Braunschweig International Graduate School of Metrology B-IGSM, the “Nieders{\"a}chsisches Vorab” through “Quantum- and Nano-Metrology (QUANOMET)” initiative within the project NL-2, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the Research Training Group GrK1952/1 “Metrology for Complex Nanosystems” and the framework of Germany{\textquoteright}s Excellence Strategy - EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers - 390837967. H.-S. S. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (Korea NRF) funded by the Korean Government via the SRC Center for Quantum Coherence in Condensed Matter (Grant No. 2016R1A5A1008184).",
year = "2020",
month = oct,
day = "28",
doi = "10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.187702",
language = "English",
volume = "125",
journal = "Physical review letters",
issn = "0031-9007",
publisher = "American Physical Society",
number = "18",
}