No Arabic abstract
We study the critical Josephson current flowing through a double quantum dot weakly coupled to two superconducting leads. We use analytical as well as numerical methods to investigate this setup in the limit of small and large bandwidth leads in all possible charging states, where we account for on-site interactions exactly. Our results provide clear signatures of nonlocal spin-entangled pairs, which support interpretations of recent experiments [Deacon, R. S. et al., Nat. Commun. 6, 7446 (2015)]. In addition, we find that the ground state with one electron on each quantum dot can undergo a tunable singlet-triplet phase transition in the regime where the superconducting gap in the leads is not too large, which gives rise to an additional new signature of nonlocal Cooper pair transport.
Odd frequency (odd-$omega$) electron pair correlations naturally appear at the interface between BCS superconductors and other materials. The detection of odd-$omega$ pairs, which are necessarily non-local in time, is still an open problem. The main reason is that they do not contribute to static measurements described by time-local correlation functions. Therefore, dynamical measurements, which depend on non-local time correlations, are suitable for detecting these pairs. In this work, we study the signatures of odd-$omega$ pairs in the supercurrent noise through a weak link between two superconductors at different superconducting phases. We show that the finite frequency current noise can be decomposed into three different contributions coming from even frequency (even-$omega$), odd-$omega$ pair amplitudes, and electron-hole correlation functions. Odd-$omega$ pairing, which is inter-lead (between electrons at different sides of the junction), provides a positive contribution to the noise, becoming maximal at a superconducting phase difference of $pi$. In contrast, intra-lead even-$omega$ pair amplitude tends to reduce the noise, except for a region close to $pi$, controlled by the transmission of the junction.
We investigate the coherent energy and thermal transport in a temperature-biased long Josephson tunnel junction, when a Josephson vortex, i.e., a soliton, steadily drifts driven by an electric bias current. We demonstrate that thermal transport through the junction can be controlled by the bias current, since it determines the steady-state velocity of the drifting soliton. We study the effects on thermal transport of the damping affecting the soliton dynamics. In fact, a soliton locally influences the power flowing through the junction and can cause the variation of the temperature of the device. When the soliton speed increases approaching its limiting value, i.e., the Swihart velocity, we demonstrate that the soliton-induces thermal effects significantly modify. Finally, we discuss how the appropriate material selection of the superconductors forming the junction is essential, since short quasiparticle relaxation times are required to observe fast thermal effects.
We measure the non-dissipative supercurrent in a single InAs self-assembled quantum dot (QD) coupled to superconducting leads. The QD occupation is both tuned by a back-gate electrode and lateral side-gate. The geometry of the side-gate allows tuning of the QD-lead tunnel coupling in a region of constant electron number with appropriate orbital state. Using the side-gate effect we study the competition between Kondo correlations and superconducting pairing on the QD, observing a decrease in the supercurrent when the Kondo temperature is reduced below the superconducting energy gap in qualitative agreement with theoretical predictions.
At the interface between a ferromagnetic insulator and a superconductor there is a coupling between the spins of the two materials. We show that when a supercurrent carried by triplet Cooper pairs flows through the superconductor, the coupling induces a magnon spin current in the adjacent ferromagnetic insulator. The effect is dominated by Cooper pairs polarized in the same direction as the ferromagnetic insulator, so that charge and spin supercurrents produce similar results. Our findings demonstrate a way of converting Cooper pair supercurrents to magnon spin currents.
The ac Josephson effect in a ferromagnetic Josephson junction, which is composed of two superconductors separated by a ferromagnetic metal (FM), is studied by a tunneling Hamiltonian and Greens function method. We obtain two types of superconducting phase dependent current, i.e., Josephson current and quasiparticle-pair-interference current (QPIC). These currents change their signs with thickness of the FM layer due to the 0-$pi$ transition characteristic to the ferromagnetic Josephson junction. As a function of applied voltage, the Josephson critical current shows a logarithmic divergence called the Riedel peak at the gap voltage, while the QPIC shows a discontinuous jump. The Riedel peak reverses due to the 0-$pi$ transition and disappears near the 0-$pi$ transition point. The discontinuous jump in the QPIC also represents similar behaviors to the Riedel peak. These results are in contrast to the conventional ones.