Anomalous quantized conductance in a half-metal/topological superconductor/half-metal junction

The composite topological superconductor (TS), which is made of one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled nanowire with proximity-induced superconductivity from an s-wave superconductor, is not a pure p-wave superconductor, but has a suppressed s-wave pairing. We calculate the conductance spectrum of a half-metal/TS/half-metal junction in order to probe the pairing states and the spin texture of the p-wave pairing. It is found that, besides the regular quantized conductance peak contributed by Majorana fermions (MFs) when the half-metal magnetization is parallel to the MF spin, an anomalous quantized conductance peak exists when they are almost antiparallel. The physical origin is the MF-assisted local Andreev reflection to condense s-wave pairings. The anomalous quantized conductance is also confirmed by the Kitaev's p-wave model with a nonzero s-wave pairing. The findings might provide a new way to find the MF. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.