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

Björn Zocher; Mats Horsdal; Bernd Rosenow

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.227001

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

Björn Zocher, Mats Horsdal, Bernd Rosenow

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.227001 · Physical Review Letters

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Abstract

In semiconductor-superconductor hybrid structures a topological phase transition is expected as a function of the 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, on the scale of the superconducting gap and for a fixed electron parity of the ring, the excitation spectrum is independent of flux in the topologically trivial phase but acquires a characteristic h/e periodicity in the nontrivial phase. We relate the h/e periodicity to the recently predicted 4π periodicity of the Josephson current across a junction formed by two topological superconductors.