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Register a new userSupercurrent in Nb/InAs-Nanowire/Nb Josephson junctions
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We report on the fabrication and measurements of planar mesoscopic Josephson junctions formed by InAs nanowires coupled to superconducting Nb terminals. The use of Si-doped InAs-nanowires with different bulk carrier concentrations allowed to tune the properties of the junctions. We have studied the junction characteristics as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and magnetic field. In junctions with high doping concentrations in the nanowire Josephson supercurrent values up to 100,nA are found. Owing to the use of Nb as superconductor the Josephson coupling persists at temperatures up to 4K. In all junctions the critical current monotonously decreased with the magnetic field, which can be explained by a recently developed theoretical model for the proximity effect in ultra-small Josephson junctions. For the low-doped Josephson junctions a control of the critical current by varying the gate voltage has been demonstrated. We have studied conductance fluctuations in nanowires coupled to superconducting and normal metal terminals. The conductance fluctuation amplitude is found to be about 6 times larger in superconducting contacted nanowires. The enhancement of the conductance fluctuations is attributed to phase-coherent Andreev reflection as well as to the large number of phase-coherent channels due to the large superconducting gap of the Nb electrodes.
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We experimentally studied the Josephson supercurrent in Nb/InN-nanowire/Nb junctions. Large critical currents up to 5.7 $mu$A have been achieved, which proves the good coupling of the nanowire to the superconductor. The effect of a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the Josephson junction on the critical current has been studied. The observed monotonous decrease of the critical current with magnetic field is explained by the magnetic pair-breaking effect in planar Josephson junctions of ultra-narrow width [J. C. Cuevas and F. S. Bergeret, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 217002 (2007)]
The Josephson effect is a fundamental quantum phenomenon consisting in the appearance of a dissipationless supercurrent in a weak link between two superconducting (S) electrodes. While the mechanism leading to the Josephson effect is quite general, i.e., Andreev reflections at the interface between the S electrodes and the weak link, the precise physical details and topology of the junction drastically modify the properties of the supercurrent. Specifically, a strong enhancement of the critical supercurrent $I_C$ is expected to occur when the topology of the junction allows the emergence of Majorana bound states. Here we report charge transport measurements in mesoscopic Josephson junctions formed by InAs nanowires and Ti/Al superconducting leads. Our main observation is a colossal enhancement of the critical supercurrent induced by an external magnetic field applied perpendicular to the substrate. This striking and anomalous supercurrent enhancement cannot be ascribed to any known conventional phenomenon existing in Josephson junctions including, for instance, Fraunhofer-like diffraction or a $pi$-state behavior. We also investigate an unconventional model related to inhomogenous Zeeman field caused by magnetic focusing, and note that it can not account for the observed behaviour. Finally, we consider these results in the context of topological superconductivity, and show that the observed $I_C$ enhancement is compatible with a magnetic field-induced topological transition of the junction.
A three-dimensional Dirac semimetal has bulk Dirac cones in all three momentum directions and Fermi arc-like surface states, and can be converted into a Weyl semimetal by breaking time-reversal symmetry. However, the highly conductive bulk state usually hides the electronic transport from the surface state in Dirac semimetal. Here, we demonstrate the supercurrent carried by bulk and surface states in Nb-Cd3As2 nanowire-Nb short and long junctions, respectively. For the 1 micrometer long junction, the Fabry-Perot interferences induced oscillations of the critical supercurrent are observed, suggesting the ballistic transport of the surface states carried supercurrent, where the bulk states are decoherent and the topologically protected surface states still keep coherent. Moreover, a superconducting dome is observed in the long junction, which is attributed to the enhanced dephasing from the interaction between surface and bulk states as tuning gate voltage to increase the carrier density. The superconductivity of topological semimetal nanowire is promising for braiding of Majorana fermions toward topological quantum computing.
Highly transmissive ballistic junctions are demonstrated between Nb and the two-dimensional electron gas formed at an InAs/AlSb heterojunction. A reproducible fabrication protocol is presented yielding high critical supercurrent values. Current-voltage characteristics were measured down to 0.4 K and the observed supercurrent behavior was analyzed within a ballistic model in the clean limit. This investigation allows us to demonstrate an intrinsic interface transmissivity approaching 90%. The reproducibility of the fabrication protocol makes it of interest for the experimental study of InAs-based superconductor-semiconductor hybrid devices.
We report on the observation of excitation of Majorana fermions in a Nb-InSb nanowire quantum dot-Nb hybrid system. The InSb nanowire quantum dot is formed between the two Nb contacts by weak Schottky barriers and is thus in the regime of strong couplings to the contacts. Due to the proximity effect, the InSb nanowire segments covered by superconductor Nb contacts turn to superconductors with a superconducting energy gap $Delta^*$. Under an applied magnetic field larger than a critical value for which the Zeeman energy in the InSb nanowire is $E_zsim Delta^*$, the entire InSb nanowire is found to be in a nontrivial topological superconductor phase, supporting a pair of Majorana fermions, and Cooper pairs can transport between the superconductor Nb contacts via the Majorana fermion states. This transport process will be suppressed when the applied magnetic field becomes larger than a second critical value at which the transition to a trivial topological superconductor phase occurs in the system. This physical scenario has been observed in our experiment. We have found that the measured zero-bias conductance for our hybrid device shows a conductance plateau in a range of the applied magnetic field in quasi-particle Coulomb blockade regions.
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