SciPost Physics

SciPost Phys. 6, 055 (2019) · published 8 May 2019

• doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.6.5.055
• pdf
• BiBTeX
• RIS
• Submissions/Reports
• 

Abstract

We study Majorana fermions bound to vortex cores in a chiral $p$-wave superconductor at temperatures non-negligible compared to the superconducting gap. Thermal occupation of Caroli de Gennes-Matricon states, below the full gap, causes the free energy difference between the two fermionic parity sectors to decay algebraically with increasing temperature. The power law acquires an additional factor of $T^{-1}$ for each bound state thermally excited. The zero-temperature result is exponentially recovered well below the minigap (lowest-lying CdGM level). Our results suggest that temperatures larger than the minigap may not be disastrous for topological quantum computation. We discuss the prospect of precision measurements of pinning forces on vortices as a readout scheme for Majorana qubits.

• Ziesen et al., Geometry-independent tight-binding method for massless Dirac fermions in two dimensions
  Phys. Rev. B 107, 195409 (2023) [Crossref]
• Ziesen et al., Statistical Majorana Bound State Spectroscopy
  Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 106001 (2023) [Crossref]
• Aseev et al., Degeneracy lifting of Majorana bound states due to electron-phonon interactions
  Phys. Rev. B 99, 205435 (2019) [Crossref]
• Sanno et al., Ab initio simulation of non-Abelian braiding statistics in topological superconductors
  Phys. Rev. B 103, 054504 (2021) [Crossref]
• Calzona et al., Moving Majorana bound states between distinct helical edges across a quantum point contact
  Phys. Rev. Research 1, 033212 (2019) [Crossref]
• Ma et al., Braiding Majorana fermions and creating quantum logic gates with vortices on a periodic pinning structure
  Phys. Rev. B 101, 024514 (2020) [Crossref]