A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) was prepared on a micron-sized single crystal using a selected growth domain of a thin film of $CeCoIn_5$ grown by molecular beam epitaxy. SQUID voltage oscillations of good quality were obtained as well as interference effects stemming from the individual Josephson microbridges. The transport characteristics in the superconducting state exhibited several peculiarities which we ascribe to the periodic motion of vortices in the microbridges. The temperature dependence of the Josephson critical current shows good correspondence to the Ambegaokar-Baratoff relation, expected for the ideal Josephson junction. The results indicate a promising pathway to identify the type of order parameter in $CeCoIn_5$ by means of phase-sensitive measurements on microbridges.
We report DC Josephson effects observed in a microbridge prepared from an individual crystalline growth domain of $CeCoIn_5$ thin film. Josephson effects were observed by periodic voltage modulations under external magnetic field $Delta V(B)$ with the expected periodicity and by the temperature dependence of the Josephson critical current $I_c(T)$. The shape of $Delta V(B)$ was found to be asymmetric, as it is expected for microbridges. The dependence $I_c(T)$ follows the Ambegaokar-Baratoff relation, which is unexpected for microbridges. Features in the dynamical resistance curves were attributed to the periodic motion of Abricosov vortices within the microbridge.
We report the magnetic field-dependent far-infrared reflectivity of polycrystalline bismuth. We observe four distinct absorptions that we attribute to magnetoplasmon resonances, which are collective modes of an electron-hole liquid in magnetic field and become optical and acoustic resonances of the electron-hole system in the small-field limit. The acoustic mode is expected only when the masses of distinct components are very different, which is the case in bismuth. In a polycrystal, where the translational symmetry is broken, a big shift of spectral weight to acoustic plasmon is possible. This enables us to detect an associated plasma edge. Although the polycrystal sample has grains of randomly distributed orientations, our reflectivity results can be explained by invoking only two, clearly distinct, series of resonances. In the limit of zero field, the optical modes of these two series converge onto plasma frequencies measured in monocrystal along the main optical axes.
We show that in electron-hole bilayers with excitonic order arising from conduction and valence bands formed by atomic orbitals that transform differently under inversion, nonzero interlayer tunneling leads to a second order Josephson effect. This means the interlayer electrical current is related to the phase of the excitonic order parameter as $J = J_c sin2theta$ instead of $J = J_c sin theta$, and that the system has two degenerate ground states that can be switched by an interlayer voltage. In a three dimensional stack of alternating electron-hole planes or a two dimensional stack of chains, the second order Josephson coupling can lead to a Weyl semimetal or a quantum anomalous hall insulator, respectively. A generic order parameter steering effect is demonstrated, whereby electric field pulses perpendicular to the layers and chains can steer the order parameter phase between the two degenerate ground states. The steering is also applicable to the excitonic insulator candidate Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$.
Thin layers of topological insulator materials are quasi-two-dimensional systems featuring a complex interplay between quantum confinement and topological band structure. To understand the role of the spatial distribution of carriers in electrical transport, we study the Josephson effect, magnetotransport, and weak anti-localization in bottom-gated thin Bi$_2$Te$_3$ topological insulator films.We compare the experimental carrier densities to a model based on the solutions of the self-consistent Schrodinger-Poisson equations and find excellent agreement. The modeling allows for a quantitative interpretation of the weak antilocalization correction to the conduction and of the critical current of Josephson junctions with weak links made from such films without any ad hoc assumptions.
We propose a novel platform for the study of quantum phase transitions in one dimension (1D QPT). The system consists of a specially designed chain of asymmetric SQUIDs; each SQUID contains several Josephson junctions with one junction shared between the nearest-neighbor SQUIDs.We develop the theoretical description of the low energy part of the spectrum. In particular, we show that the system exhibits the quantum phase transition of Ising type. In the vicinity of the transition the low energy excitations of the system can be described by Majorana fermions. This allow us to compute the matrix elements of the physical perturbations in the low energy sector. In the microwave experiments with this system, we explored the phase boundaries between the ordered and disordered phases and the critical behavior of the systems low-energy modes close to the transition. Due to the flexible chain design and control of the parameters of individual Josephson junctions, future experiments will be able to address the effects of non-integrability and disorder on the 1D QPT.