Microwave detection of gliding Majorana zero modes in nanowires

TL;DR

This paper proposes a microwave-based method to detect and study gliding Majorana zero modes in topological nanowires, revealing their non-local properties and robustness against disorder.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microwave spectroscopy technique to probe non-local Majorana modes without requiring wavefunction overlap, supported by analytical and numerical analysis.

Findings

Cavity decay rate depends on Majorana parity and motion

Gliding Majorana modes modify microwave interference patterns

Method is robust against moderate disorder

Abstract

We study a topological superconducting nanowire that hosts gliding Majorana zero modes in the presence of a microwave cavity field. We show that the cavity decay rate depends on both the parity encoded by the Majorana zero modes and their motion, in the absence of any direct overlap of their wavefunctions. That is because the extended bulk states that overlap with both Majorana states, facilitate their momentum-resolved microwave spectroscopy, with the gliding acting as to modify the interference pattern via a momentum boost. Moreover, we demonstrate that these non-local effects are robust against moderate disorder in the chemical potential, and confirm the numerical calculations with an analytical low-energy model. Our approach offers an alternative to tunneling spectroscopy to probe non-local features associated with the Majorana zero modes in nanowires.