Proposed Aharonov-Casher interference measurement of non-Abelian vortices in chiral p-wave superconductors

TL;DR

This paper proposes a vortex interferometry experiment using the Aharonov-Casher effect to detect non-Abelian vortices in chiral p-wave superconductors, predicting unique interference pattern signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interferometry method for identifying non-Abelian vortices and derives their mutual statistics in complex pairing scenarios.

Findings

Interference pattern disappearance for odd vortex enclosures indicates non-Abelian vortices.

Derived mutual statistics between half quantum and full quantum vortices.

Predicted experimental conditions for observing the effects.

Abstract

We propose a two-path vortex interferometry experiment based on the Aharonov-Casher effect for detecting the non-Abelian nature of vortices in a chiral p-wave superconductor. The effect is based on observing vortex interference patterns upon enclosing a finite charge of externally controllable magnitude within the interference path. We predict that when the interfering vortices enclose an odd number of identical vortices in their path, the interference pattern disappears only for non-Abelian vortices. When pairing involves two distinct spin species, we derive the mutual statistics between half quantum and full quantum vortices and show that, remarkably, our predictions still hold for the situation of a full quantum vortex enclosing a half quantum vortex in its path. We discuss the experimentally relevant conditions under which these effects can be observed.