Conductance and noise signatures of Majorana backscattering

Suk Bum Chung, Xiao-Liang Qi, Joseph Maciejko, Shou-Cheng Zhang

Published 2010-08-11Version 1

We propose a conductance measurement to detect the backscattering of chiral Majorana edge states. Because normal and Andreev processes have equal probability for backscattering of a single chiral Majorana edge state, there is qualitative difference from backscattering of a chiral Dirac edge state, giving rise to half-integer Hall conductivity and decoupling of fluctuation in incoming and outgoing modes. The latter can be detected through thermal noise measurement. These experimental signatures of Majorana fermions are robust at finite temperature and do not require the size of the backscattering region to be mesoscopic.