We propose and analyze theoretically an experimental setup for detecting theelusive Majorana particle in semiconductor-superconductor heterostructures. Theexperimental system consists of one-dimensional semiconductor wire with strongspin-orbit Rashba interaction embedded into a superconducting quantuminterference device. We show that the energy spectra of the Andreev boundstates at the junction are qualitatively different in topologically trivial(i.e., not containing any Majorana) and nontrivial phases having an even andodd number of crossings at zero energy, respectively. The measurement of thesupercurrent through the junction allows one to discern topologically distinctphases and observe a topological phase transition by simply changing thein-plane magnetic field or the gate voltage. The observation of this phasetransition will be a direct demonstration of the existence of Majoranaparticles.
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