Probing the existence and dynamics of Majorana fermion via transport through a quantum dot

Yunshan Cao, Peiyue Wang, Gang Xiong, Xin-Qi Li

Published 2012-05-02, updated 2012-05-06Version 2

We consider an experimentally feasible setup to demonstrate the existence and coherent dynamics of Majorana fermion. The transport setup consists of a quantum dot and a tunnel-coupled semiconductor nanowire which is anticipated to generate Majorana excitations under some conditions. For transport under finite bias voltage, we find that a subtraction of the source and drain currents can expose the essential feature of the Majorana fermion, including the zero-energy nature by gate-voltage modulating the dot level. Moreover, coherent oscillating dynamics of the Majorana fermion between the nanowire and the quantum dot is reflected in the shot noise via a spectral dip together with a pronounced zero-frequency noise enhancement effect. Important parameters, e.g. for the Majorana's mutual interaction and its coupling to the quantum dot, can be extracted out in experiment using the derived analytic results.