English

$6\pi$ Josephson effect in Majorana box devices

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2017-02-06 v2

Abstract

We study Majorana devices featuring a competition between superconductivity and multi-channel Kondo physics. Our proposal extends previous work on single-channel Kondo systems to a topologically nontrivial setting of non-Fermi liquid type, where topological superconductor wires (with gap Δ\Delta) represent leads tunnel-coupled to a Coulomb-blockaded Majorana box. On the box, a spin degree of freedom with Kondo temperature TKT_K is nonlocally defined in terms of Majorana states. For ΔTK\Delta\gg T_K, the destruction of Kondo screening by superconductivity implies a 4π4\pi-periodic Josephson current-phase relation. Using a strong-coupling analysis in the opposite regime ΔTK\Delta \ll T_K, we find a 6π6\pi-periodic Josephson relation for three leads, with critical current IceΔ2/TKI_c\approx e\Delta^2/ \hbar T_K, corresponding to the transfer of fractionalized charges e=2e/3e^*=2e/3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.07307,
  title  = {$6\pi$ Josephson effect in Majorana box devices},
  author = {A. Zazunov and F. Buccheri and P. Sodano and R. Egger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.07307},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure + supplementary material (3 pages); final version, accepted to PRL

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:00:46.469Z