Charge localization and reentrant superconductivity in a quasi-ballistic InAs nanowire coupled to superconductors.

A semiconductor nanowire with strong spin-orbit coupling in proximity to a superconductor is predicted to display Majorana edge states emerging under a properly oriented magnetic field. The experimental investigation of these exotic states requires assessing the one-dimensional (1D) character of the nanowire and understanding the superconducting proximity effect in the presence of a magnetic field. Here, we explore the quasi-ballistic 1D transport regime of an InAs nanowire with Ta contacts. Fine-tuned by means of local gates, the observed plateaus of approximately quantized conductance hide the presence of a localized electron, giving rise to a lurking Coulomb blockade effect and Kondo physics. When Ta becomes superconducting, this local charge causes an unusual, reentrant magnetic field dependence of the supercurrent, which we ascribe to a 0 - π transition. Our results underline the relevant role of unintentional charge localization in the few-channel regime where helical subbands and Majorana quasi-particles are expected to arise.

Supercurrent in a Double Quantum Dot.

We demonstrate the Josephson effect in a serial double quantum dot defined in a nanowire with epitaxial superconducting leads. The supercurrent stability diagram adopts a honeycomb pattern. We observe sharp discontinuities in the magnitude of the critical current, I_{c}, as a function of dot occupation, related to doublet to singlet ground state transitions. Detuning of the energy levels offers a tuning knob for I_{c}, which attains a maximum at zero detuning. The consistency between experiment and theory indicates that our device is a faithful realization of the two-impurity Anderson model.