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Register a new userField-Effect Controllable Metallic Josephson Interferometer
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Gate-tunable Josephson junctions (JJs) are the backbone of superconducting classical and quantum computation. Typically, these systems exploit low charge concentration materials, and present technological diffculties limiting their scalability. Surprisingly, electric field modulation of supercurrent in metallic wires and JJs has been recently demonstrated. Here, we report the realization of titanium-based monolithic interferometers which allow tuning both JJs independently via voltage bias applied to capacitively-coupled electrodes. Our experiments demonstrate full control of the amplitude of the switching current (IS) and of the superconducting phase across the single JJ in a wide range of temperatures. Astoundingly, by gate-biasing a single junction the maximum achievable total IS suppresses down to values much lower than the critical current of a single JJ. A theoretical model including gate-induced phase fluctuations on a single junction accounts for our experimental findings. This class of quantum interferometers could represent a breakthrough for several applications such as digital electronics, quantum computing, sensitive magnetometry and single-photon detection.
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We propose an interferometer for chiral Majorana modes where the interference effect is caused and controlled by a Josephson junction of proximity-induced topological superconductors, hence, a Majorana-Josephson interferometer. This interferometer is based on a two-terminal quantum anomalous Hall bar, and as such its transport observables exhibit interference patterns depending on both the Josephson phase and the junction length. Observing these interference patterns will establish quantum coherent Majorana transport and further provide a powerful characterization tool for the relevant system.
Despite metals are believed to be insensitive to field-effect and conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theories predict the electric field to be ineffective on conventional superconductors, a number of gating experiments showed the possibility of modulating the conductivity of metallic thin films and the critical temperature of conventional superconductors. All these experimental features have been explained by simple charge accumulation/depletion. In 2018, electric field control of supercurrent in conventional metallic superconductors has been demonstrated in a range of electric fields where the induced variation of charge carrier concentration in metals is negligibly small. In fact, no changes of normal state resistance and superconducting critical temperature were reported. Here, we review the experimental results obtained in the realization of field-effect metallic superconducting devices exploiting this unexplained phenomenon. We will start by presenting the seminal results on superconducting BCS wires and nano-constriction Josephson junctions (Dayem bridges) made of different materials, such as titanium, aluminum and vanadium. Then, we show the mastering of the Josephson supercurrent in superconductor-normal metal-superconductor proximity transistors suggesting that the presence of induced superconducting correlations are enough to see this unconventional field-effect. Later, we present the control of the interference pattern in a superconducting quantum interference device indicating the coupling of the electric field with thesuperconducting phase. Among the possible applications of the presented phenomenology, we conclude this review by proposing some devices that may represent a breakthrough in superconducting quantum and classical computation.
In the classical Josephson effect the phase difference across the junction is well defined, and the supercurrent is reduced only weakly by phase diffusion. For mesoscopic junctions with small capacitance the phase undergoes large quantum fluctuations, and the current is also decreased by Coulomb blockade effects. We discuss the behavior of the current-voltage characteristics in a large range of parameters comprising the phase diffusion regime with coherent Josephson current as well as the supercurrent peak due to incoherent Cooper pair tunneling in the Coulomb blockade regime.
Recently Baselmans et al. [Nature, 397, 43 (1999)] showed that the direction of the supercurrent in a superconductor/normal/superconductor Josephson junction can be reversed by applying, perpendicularly to the supercurrent, a sufficiently large control current between two normal reservoirs. The novel behavior of their 4-terminal device (called a controllable PI-junction) arises from the nonequilibrium electron energy distribution established in the normal wire between the two superconductors. We have observed a similar supercurrent reversal in a 3-terminal device, where the control current passes from a single normal reservoir into the two superconductors. We show theoretically that this behavior, although intuitively less obvious, arises from the same nonequilibrium physics present in the 4-terminal device. Moreover, we argue that the amplitude of the PI-state critical current should be at least as large in the 3-terminal device as in a comparable 4-terminal device.
Topological Josephson junctions designed on the surface of a 3D-topological insulator (TI) harbor Majorana bound states (MBSs) among a continuum of conventional Andreev bound states. The distinct feature of these MBSs lies in the $4pi$-periodicity of their energy-phase relation that yields a fractional ac Josephson effect and a suppression of odd Shapiro steps under $r!f$ irradiation. Yet, recent experiments showed that a few, or only the first, odd Shapiro steps are missing, casting doubts on the interpretation. Here, we show that Josephson junctions tailored on the large bandgap 3D TI Bi$_2$Se$_3$ exhibit a fractional ac Josephson effect acting on the first Shapiro step only. With a modified resistively shunted junction model, we demonstrate that the resilience of higher order odd Shapiro steps can be accounted for by thermal poisoning driven by Joule overheating. Furthermore, we uncover a residual supercurrent at the nodes between Shapiro lobes, which provides a direct and novel signature of the current carried by the MBS. Our findings showcase the crucial role of thermal effects in topological Josephson junctions and lend support to the Majorana origin of the partial suppression of odd Shapiro steps.
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