Kavli Affiliate: Michael Wimmer
| First 5 Authors: Tom Dvir, Guanzhong Wang, Nick van Loo, Chun-Xiao Liu, Grzegorz P. Mazur
| Summary:
Majorana bound states constitute one of the simplest examples of emergent
non-Abelian excitations in condensed matter physics. A toy model proposed by
Kitaev shows that such states can arise at the ends of a spinless $p$-wave
superconducting chain. Practical proposals for its realization require coupling
neighboring quantum dots in a chain via both electron tunneling and crossed
Andreev reflection. While both processes have been observed in semiconducting
nanowires and carbon nanotubes, crossed-Andreev interaction was neither easily
tunable nor strong enough to induce coherent hybridization of dot states. Here
we demonstrate the simultaneous presence of all necessary ingredients for an
artificial Kitaev chain: two spin-polarized quantum dots in an InSb nanowire
strongly coupled by both elastic co-tunneling and crossed Andreev reflection.
We fine-tune this system to a sweet spot where a pair of Poor Man’s Majorana
states is predicted to appear. At this sweet spot, the transport
characteristics satisfy the theoretical predictions for such a system,
including pairwise correlation, zero charge and stability against local
perturbations. While the simple system presented here can be scaled to simulate
a full Kitaev chain with an emergent topological order, it can also be used
imminently to explore relevant physics related to non-Abelian anyons.
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