Observation of the fractional ac Josephson effect: the signature of Majorana particles

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental observation of the fractional ac Josephson effect in a semiconductor/superconductor nanowire junction, providing evidence for Majorana particles and topological superconductivity.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental detection of the fractional ac Josephson effect as a signature of Majorana fermions in a hybrid nanowire device.

Findings

Observation of Shapiro steps at hf/2e in low magnetic fields

Doubling of the first Shapiro step to hf/e at high magnetic fields

Evidence of charge-e quasiparticles indicating Majorana modes

Abstract

Topological superconductors which support Majorana fermions are thought to be realized in one-dimensional semiconducting wires coupled to a superconductor. Such excitations are expected to exhibit non-Abelian statistics and can be used to realize quantum gates that are topologically protected from local sources of decoherence. Here we report the observation of the fractional a.c. Josephson effect in a hybrid semiconductor/superconductor InSb/Nb nanowire junction, a hallmark of topological matter. When the junction is irradiated with a radio-frequency f in the absence of an external magnetic field, quantized voltage steps (Shapiro steps) with a height hf/2e are observed, as is expected for conventional superconductor junctions, where the supercurrent is carried by charge-2e Cooper pairs. At high magnetic fields the height of the first Shapiro step is doubled to hf/e, suggesting that the supercurrent is carried by charge-e quasiparticles. This is a unique signature of Majorana fermions, elusive particles predicted ca. 80 years ago.