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TOPOLOGICAL SUPERCONDUCTIVITY

Quantized, finally

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 334–336 (2018)Cite this article

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An Addendum to this article was published on 14 May 2021

Quantized Majorana conductance is a hallmark of topological superconductors, but its fragility has made it difficult to observe. Device improvements have now enabled its measurement, making everyone eager to see the next step — topological qubits.

Topological states of matter exhibit quantized physical observables. For example, in quantum Hall liquids the transverse conductivity can only assume values that are rational multiples of the conductance quantum e 2/h. In the case of one-dimensional topological superconductors, the physical observable theoretically predicted to exhibit quantization is the tunnelling conductance between the topological superconductor and an external normal lead1,2,3 — known as Majorana conductance. This quantization, expected to be exact only at zero temperature, is more fragile than in the case of the quantum Hall effect, and has eluded observation so far. Writing in Nature, Hao Zhang and colleagues4 have now reported robust quantized Majorana conductance in a semiconductor nanowire that hosts topological superconductivity due to a combination of spin–orbit coupling, induced superconductivity and Zeeman splitting created by a magnetic field5,6.

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Fig. 1: Resonant transmission and Andreev reflection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy and Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Marcel Franz

  2. Station Q, Microsoft Research, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Dmitry I. Pikulin

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  1. Marcel Franz
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  2. Dmitry I. Pikulin
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Correspondence to Marcel Franz or Dmitry I. Pikulin.

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Franz, M., Pikulin, D.I. Quantized, finally. Nature Phys 14, 334–336 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-018-0100-5

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