Conductance of a proximitized nanowire in the Coulomb blockade regime

The search for Majorana bound states, motivated by the prospect of discovering non-Abelian exchange statistics and developing topological quantum computing, is an ongoing challenge in condensed matter physics. Crafting a wire hosting Majorana states is not a trivial task, requiring great care in the choice of materials and in the device design. Experimentalists rely on the electron transport measurements to characterize the devices. It is therefore important to have a detailed theory for interpreting the experimental data and reliably detecting the nontrivial (topological) superconductivity needed for the appearance of Majorana states. Here, the authors have developed such a theory for short small-capacitance wires. In such wires, the apperance of Majorana states coexists with the effects of single-electron charging. The theory here provides quantitative results for the electric conduction of wires in these conditions and provides guidance for those in the field seeking understanding of important recent experiments, as well as those designing the future ones.