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American Physical Society, Physical review B, 18(84)

DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.84.180502

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Coulomb stability of the 4π-periodic Josephson effect of Majorana fermions

Journal article published in 2011 by B. van Heck ORCID, F. Hassler, A. R. Akhmerov, C. W. J. Beenakker ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

The Josephson energy of two superconducting islands containing Majorana fermions is a 4π-periodic function of the superconducting phase difference. If the islands have a small capacitance, their ground state energy is governed by the competition of Josephson and charging energies. We calculate this ground state energy in a ring geometry, as a function of the flux -Φ- enclosed by the ring, and show that the dependence on the Aharonov-Bohm phase 2eΦ/\hbar remains 4π-periodic regardless of the ratio of charging and Josephson energies - provided that the entire ring is in a topologically nontrivial state. If part of the ring is topologically trivial, then the charging energy induces quantum phase slips that restore the usual 2π-periodicity. ; Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; v2: more references, improved phase-slip formula, and a discussion of the effect of overlapping Majorana's