One of the most promising approaches of generating spin- and energy-entangled electron pairs is splitting a Cooper pair into the metal through spatially separated terminals. Utilizing hybrid systems with the energy-dependent barriers at the superconductor-normal metal interfaces, one can achieve practically 100% efficiency outcome of entangled electrons. We investigate minimalistic one-dimensional model comprising a superconductor and two metallic leads and derive an expression for an electron-to-hole transmission probability as a measure of splitting efficiency. We find the conditions for achieving 100% efficiency and present analytical results for the differential conductance and differential noise.
We propose a three-terminal structure to probe robust signatures of Majorana zero modes consisting of a quantum dot coupled to the normal metal, s-wave superconducting and Majorana Y-junction leads. The zero-bias differential conductance at zero temperature of the normal-metal lead peaks at $2e^{2}/h$, which will be deflected after Majorana braiding. We find that the effect of thermal broadening is significantly suppressed when the dot is on resonance. In the case that the energy level of the quantum dot is much larger than the superconducting gap, tunneling processes are dominated by Majorana-induced crossed Andreev reflection. Particularly, a novel kind of crossed Andreev reflection equivalent to the splitting of charge quanta $3e$ occurs after Majorana braiding.
We study superconducting quantum interference in InSb flake Josephson junctions. An even-odd effect in the amplitude and periodicity of the superconducting quantum interference pattern is found. Interestingly, the occurrence of this pattern coincides with enhanced conduction at both edges of the flake, as is deduced from measuring a SQUID pattern at reduced gate voltages. We identify the specific crystal facet of the edge with enhanced conduction, and confirm this by measuring multiple devices. Furthermore, we argue the even-odd effect is due to crossed Andreev reflection, a process where a Cooper pair splits up over the two edges and recombines at the opposite contact. An entirely $h/e$ periodic SQUID pattern, as well as the observation of both even-odd and odd-even effects, corroborates this conclusion. Crossed Andreev reflection could be harnessed for creating a topological state of matter or performing experiments on the non-local spin-entanglement of spatially separated Cooper pairs.
We show experimentally that in nanometer scaled superconductor/normal metal hybrid devices and in a small window of contact resistances, crossed Andreev reflection (CAR) can dominate the nonlocal transport for all energies below the superconducting gap. Besides CAR, elastic cotunneling (EC) and nonlocal charge imbalance (CI) can be identified as competing subgap transport mechanisms in temperature dependent four-terminal nonlocal measurements. We demonstrate a systematic change of the nonlocal resistance vs. bias characteristics with increasing contact resistances, which can be varied in the fabrication process. For samples with higher contact resistances, CAR is weakened relative to EC in the midgap regime, possibly due to dynamical Coulomb blockade. Gaining control of CAR is an important step towards the realization of a solid state entangler.
We numerically study crossed Andreev reflection (CAR) in a topological insulator nanowire T-junction where one lead is proximitized by a superconductor. We perform realistic simulations based on the 3D BHZ model and compare the results with those from an effective 2D surface model, whose computational cost is much lower. Both approaches show that CAR should be clearly observable in a wide parameter range, including perfect CAR in a somewhat more restricted range. Furthermore, it can be controlled by a magnetic field and is robust to disorder. Our effective 2D implementation allows to model systems of micronsize, typical of experimental setups, but computationally too heavy for 3D models.
We have measured the non-local resistance of aluminum-iron spin-valve structures fabricated by e-beam lithography and shadow evaporation. The sample geometry consists of an aluminum bar with two or more ferromagnetic wires forming point contacts to the aluminum at varying distances from each other. In the normal state of aluminum, we observe a spin-valve signal which allows us to control the relative orientation of the magnetizations of the ferromagnetic contacts. In the superconducting state, at low temperatures and excitation voltages well below the gap, we observe a spin-dependent non-local resistance which decays on a smaller length scale than the normal-state spin-valve signal. The sign, magnitude and decay length of this signal is consistent with predictions made for crossed Andreev reflection (CAR).