Coulomb blockade effect in proximitized nanowires

Motivated by recent experiment [1], we consider a mesoscopic island consisting of a proximitized nanowire which is connected via point contacts to normal-state leads. We study transport properties of such islands in the Coulomb blockade regime as a function of an applied magnetic field [2-4]. In the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling, magnetic field can drive a proximitized nanowire into a topological superconducting phase [2,3]. The associated with the topological superconductivity Majorana modes significantly modify transport and lead to single-electron coherent transmission through the nanowire - a non-local signature of topological superconductivity. In this work, we focus on the case of strong hybridization of the Majorana modes with the normal leads. The induced by hybridization broadening of the Majorana zero-energy states competes with the charging energy, leading to a considerable modification of the Coulomb blockade in a nanowire contacted by two normal leads. We evaluate the two-terminal conductance as a function of the gate voltage, junctions transmission coefficients, the geometric capacitance of and the induced superconducting gap in the nanowire.
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