Emergent Josephson current of N=1 chiral topological superconductor in quantum anomalous Hall insulator/superconductor heterostructures

Chui-Zhen Chen, James Jun He, Dong-Hui Xu, and K. T. Law
Phys. Rev. B 98, 165439 – Published 29 October 2018

Abstract

Recently, a quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI)/superconductor heterostructure has been realized and shows half-quantized conductance plateaus in two-terminal conductance measurements [Q. L. He et al., Science 357, 294 (2017)]. The half-quantized conductance plateaus are considered as a solid evidence of chiral Majorana edge modes. However, there is a strong debate over the origin of the half-quantized conductance plateaus. In this work, we propose a Josephson junction based on the QAHI/superconductor heterostructure to identify the existence of chiral Majorana edge modes. We find that the critical Josephson current dramatically increases to a peak value when a half-quantized conductance plateau σ12=e2/2h is showing up for the N=1 chiral topological superconductor phase with a single chiral Majorana mode. Furthermore, we show that the critical Josephson current of the N=1 chiral topological superconductor exhibits an h/e-period oscillation and is robust to disorder, in contrast to the behaviors of conventional two-dimensional electron gas systems. We also estimate experimentally relevant parameters and believe that the supercurrent can be observed in experiments.

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  • Received 4 July 2018
  • Revised 9 October 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.165439

©2018 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Chui-Zhen Chen1, James Jun He1, Dong-Hui Xu2, and K. T. Law1,*

  • 1Department of Physics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China
  • 2Department of Physics, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China

  • *phlaw@ust.hk

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Issue

Vol. 98, Iss. 16 — 15 October 2018

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