We show that the microwave (MW) spectra in semiconductor-nanowire-based transmon qubits provide a strong signature of the presence of Majorana bound states in the junction.This occurs as an external magnetic field tunes the wire into the topological regime and the energy splitting of the emergent Majorana modes oscillates around zero energy owing to their wave function spatial overlap in finite-length wires.In particular, we discuss how these Majorana oscillations, and the concomitant fermion parity switches in the ground state of the junction, result in distinct spectroscopic features-in the form of an intermittent visibility of absorption lines-that strongly deviate from standard transmon behavior.In contrast, nonoscillating zero modes, such as topologically trivial Andreev bound states resulting from sufficiently smooth potentials, exhibit an overall standard transmon response.These differences in the MW response could help determine whether the junction contains topological Majoranas or not.
We show that the microwave (MW) spectra in semiconductor-nanowire-based transmon qubits provide a strong signature of the presence of Majorana bound states in the junction.This occurs as an external magnetic field tunes the wire into the topological regime and the energy splitting of the emergent Majorana modes oscillates around zero energy owing to their wave function spatial overlap in finite-length wires.In particular, we discuss how these Majorana oscillations, and the concomitant fermion parity switches in the ground state of the junction, result in distinct spectroscopic features-in the form of an intermittent visibility of absorption lines-that strongly deviate from standard transmon behavior.In contrast, nonoscillating zero modes, such as topologically trivial Andreev bound states resulting from sufficiently smooth potentials, exhibit an overall standard transmon response.These differences in the MW response could help determine whether the junction contains topological Majoranas or not.
We theoretically study superconducting islands based on semiconductor-nanowire Josephson junctions and take into account the presence of subgap quasiparticle excitations in the spectrum of the junction. Our method extends the standard model Hamiltonian for a superconducting charge qubit and replaces the Josephson potential by the Bogoliubov--de Gennes Hamiltonian of the nanowire junction, projected onto the relevant low-energy subgap subspace. This allows us to fully incorporate the coherent dynamics of subgap levels in the junction. The combined effect of spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman energy in the nanowires forming the junction triggers a topological transition, where the subgap levels evolve from finite-energy Andreev bound states into near-zero-energy Majorana bound states. The interplay between the microscopic energy scales governing the nanowire junction (the Josephson energy, the Majorana coupling, and the Majorana energy splitting), with the charging energy of the superconducting island, gives rise to a great variety of physical regimes. Based on this interplay of different energy scales, we fully characterize the microwave response of the junction, from the Cooper pair box to the transmon regimes, and show how the presence of Majoranas can be detected through distinct spectroscopic features. In split-junction geometries, the plasma mode couples to the phase-dispersing subgap levels resulting from Majorana hybridization via a Jaynes--Cummings-like interaction. As a consequence of this interaction, higher order plasma excitations in the junction inherit Majorana properties, including the $4\ensuremath{\pi}$ effect.
The modern understanding of the Josephson effect in mesosopic devices derives from the physics of Andreev bound states, fermionic modes that are localized in a superconducting weak link. Recently, Josephson junctions constructed using semiconducting nanowires have led to the realization of superconducting qubits with gate-tunable Josephson energies. We have used a microwave circuit QED architecture to detect Andreev bound states in such a gate-tunable junction based on an aluminum-proximitized indium arsenide nanowire. We demonstrate coherent manipulation of these bound states, and track the bound-state fermion parity in real time. Individual parity-switching events due to nonequilibrium quasiparticles are observed with a characteristic timescale T_{parity}=160±10 μs. The T_{parity} of a topological nanowire junction sets a lower bound on the bandwidth required for control of Majorana bound states.
Topological-material-based Josephson junctions have the potential to be used to host Majorana zero modes and to construct topological qubits. For operating the topological qubits at an appropriate timescale to avoid decoherence and quasiparticle poisoning, one would eventually go to the time domain and embed the topological qubits into quantum electrodynamic circuits. Here, we constructed a topological-insulator-nanowire-based transmon qubit and demonstrated its strong coupling to a coplanar waveguide resonator. The flux-tunable spectrum and Rabi oscillations with a qubit lifetime T 1 of ∼ 0.5 μ s were observed. Such a hybrid platform, containing topological materials and quantum electrodynamic circuits, can further be used to study the physical properties such as Majorana zero modes in topological quantum circuits.
A semiconductor transmon with an epitaxial Al shell fully surrounding an InAs nanowire core is investigated in the low E_{J}/E_{C} regime. Little-Parks oscillations as a function of flux along the hybrid wire axis are destructive, creating lobes of reentrant superconductivity separated by a metallic state at a half quantum of applied flux. In the first lobe, phase winding around the shell can induce topological superconductivity in the core. Coherent qubit operation is observed in both the zeroth and first lobes. Splitting of parity bands by coherent single-electron coupling across the junction is not resolved beyond line broadening, placing a bound on Majorana coupling, E_{M}/h<10 MHz, much smaller than the Josephson coupling E_{J}/h∼4.7 GHz.
One-dimensional SM-SC hybrid nanowires with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and applied Zeeman field can support Majorana zero modes (MZMs) at the ends of the wire. In finite-length systems, residual wave-function overlap between the end modes produces an energy splitting. In a two-sided tetron qubit, composed of a pair of parallel Majorana wires coupled by a trivial SC backbone in the middle, this splitting limits the parity lifetime associated with Majorana pairs involving both wires and the coherence of the qubit, adversely affecting measurement-based braiding and readout operations. Here, we propose a one-sided tetron made of four parallel Majorana wires connected at a common end by an SC backbone. In the topological phase, the free wire ends host four MZMs that define the topological qubit, while the Majoranas localized near the opposite ends hybridize through the backbone and acquire finite energy. To study the basic hybridization mechanism, we consider a simpler two-wire subsystem, i.e., half of a one-sided tetron, which we call a doublon. In a doublon, the backbone, or bridge, strongly hybridizes the two Majorana modes at the connected end and shifts them away from zero energy, while the modes at the free ends form a near-zero energy fermion. We show that the splitting of the surviving MZM pair can fall by about two orders of magnitude compared to the splitting energies in a two-sided tetron, thereby dramatically increasing the parity lifetimes. Thus, the one-sided tetron ensures a suppression of the Majorana overlap comparable to doubling the length of the corresponding two-sided tetron.
We theoretically explore quench dynamics in a finite-sized topological fermionic p-wave superconducting wire with the goal of demonstrating that topological order can have marked effects on such non-equilibrium dynamics. In the case studied here, topological order is reflected in the presence of two (nearly) isolated Majorana fermionic end bound modes together forming an electronic state that can be occupied or not, leading to two (nearly) degenerate ground states characterized by fermion parity. Our study begins with a characterization of the static properties of the finite-sized wire, including the behavior of the Majorana end modes and the form of the tunnel coupling between them; a transfer matrix approach to analytically determine the locations of the zero energy contours where this coupling vanishes; and a Pfaffian approach to map the ground state parity in the associated phase diagram. We next study the quench dynamics resulting from initializing the system in a topological ground state and then dynamically tuning one of the parameters of the Hamiltonian. For this, we develop a dynamic quantum many-body technique that invokes a Wick's theorem for Majorana fermions, vastly reducing the numerical effort given the exponentially large Hilbert space. We investigate the salient and detailed features of two dynamic quantities-the overlap between the time-evolved state and the instantaneous ground state (adiabatic fidelity) and the residual energy. When the parity of the instantaneous ground state flips successively with time, we find that the time-evolved state can dramatically switch back and forth between this state and an excited state even when the quenching is very slow, a phenomenon that we term `parity blocking'. This parity blocking becomes prominently manifest as non-analytic jumps as a function of time in both dynamic quantities.