Supercurrent blockade in Josephson junctions with a Majorana wire

Abstract

We study the Josephson effect for a topologically nontrivial superconducting (TS) wire with Majorana fermion end states and tunnel-coupled to s-wave BCS superconducting (S) electrodes. In an S-TS junction, no supercurrent flow is possible under fairly general conditions. For the S-TS-S junction, bulk TS quasiparticles must be accessible to have a Josephson effect. In the noninteracting case, we derive the exact current-phase relation (CPR) and find π-periodic behavior with negative critical current for weak tunnel couplings. Charging effects then cause the anomalous CPR $I(φ)=I_c \cosφ$, where the parity-sensitive critical current I_c provides a signature for Majorana states.

6 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PRB