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Register a new userUnconventional Josephson junctions with topological Kondo insulator weak links
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Proximity-induced superconductivity in three dimensional (3D) topological insulators forms a new quantum phase of matter and accommodates exotic quasiparticles such as Majorana bound states. One of the biggest drawbacks of the commonly studied 3D topological insulators is the presence of conducting bulk that obscures both surface states and low energy bound states. Introducing superconductivity in topological Kondo insulators such as SmB$_6$, however, is promising due to their true insulating bulk at low temperatures. In this work, we develop an unconventional Josephson junction by coupling superconducting Nb leads to the surface states of a SmB$_6$ crystal. We observe a robust critical current at low temperatures that responds to the application of an out-of-plane magnetic field with significant deviations from usual Fraunhofer patterns. The appearance of Shaphiro steps under microwave radiation gives further evidence of a Josephson effect. Moreover, we explore the effects of Kondo breakdown in our devices, such as ferromagnetism at the surface and anomalous temperature dependence of supercurrent. Particularly, the magnetic diffraction patterns show an anomalous hysteresis with the field sweep direction suggesting the coexistence of magnetism with superconductivity at the SmB$_6$ surface. The experimental work will advance the current understanding of topologically nontrivial superconductors and emergent states associated with such unconventional superconducting phases.
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Using non-equilibrium Greens functions, we studied numerically the transport properties of a Josephson junction, superconductor-topological insulator-superconductor hybrid system. Our numerical calculation shows first that proximity-induced superconductivity is indeed observed in the edge states of a topological insulator adjoining two superconducting leads and second that the special characteristics of topological insulators endow the edge states with an enhanced proximity effect with a superconductor but do not forbid the bulk states to do the same. In a size-dependent analysis of the local current, it was found that a few residual bulk states can lead to measurable resistance, whereas because these bulk states spread over the whole sample, their contribution to the interference pattern is insignificant when the sample size is in the micrometer range. Based on these numerical results, it is concluded that the apparent disappearance of residual bulk states in the superconducting interference process as described in Ref. [onlinecite{HartNautrePhys2014f}] is just due to the effects of size: the contribution of the topological edge states outweighs that of the residual bulk states.
Josephson junctions based on three-dimensional topological insulators offer intriguing possibilities to realize unconventional $p$-wave pairing and Majorana modes. Here, we provide a detailed study of the effect of a uniform magnetization in the normal region: We show how the interplay between the spin-momentum locking of the topological insulator and an in-plane magnetization parallel to the direction of phase bias leads to an asymmetry of the Andreev spectrum with respect to transverse momenta. If sufficiently large, this asymmetry induces a transition from a regime of gapless, counterpropagating Majorana modes to a regime with unprotected modes that are unidirectional at small transverse momenta. Intriguingly, the magnetization-induced asymmetry of the Andreev spectrum also gives rise to a Josephson Hall effect, that is, the appearance of a transverse Josephson current. The amplitude and current phase relation of the Josephson Hall current are studied in detail. In particular, we show how magnetic control and gating of the normal region can enable sizable Josephson Hall currents compared to the longitudinal Josephson current. Finally, we also propose in-plane magnetic fields as an alternative to the magnetization in the normal region and discuss how the planar Josephson Hall effect could be observed in experiments.
We report transport measurements on Josephson junctions consisting of Bi2Te3 topological insulator (TI) thin films contacted by superconducting Nb electrodes. For a device with junction length L = 134 nm, the critical supercurrent Ic can be modulated by an electrical gate which tunes the carrier type and density of the TI film. Ic can reach a minimum when the TI is near the charge neutrality regime with the Fermi energy lying close to the Dirac point of the surface state. In the p-type regime the Josephson current can be well described by a short ballistic junction model. In the n-type regime the junction is ballistic at 0.7 K < T < 3.8 K while for T < 0.7 K the diffusive bulk modes emerge and contribute a larger Ic than the ballistic model. We attribute the lack of diffusive bulk modes in the p-type regime to the formation of p-n junctions. Our work provides new clues for search of Majorana zero mode in TI-based superconducting devices.
Coupling of Josephson-phase and spin-waves is theoretically studied in a superconductor/ferromagnetic insulator/superconductor (S/FI/S) junction. Electromagnetic (EM) field inside the junction and the Josephson current coupled with spin-waves in FI are calculated by combining Maxwell and Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations. In the S/FI/S junction, it is found that the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic shows two resonant peaks. Voltages at the resonant peaks are obtained as a function of the normal modes of EM field, which indicates a composite excitation of the EM field and spin-waves in the S/FI/S junction. We also examine another type of junction, in which a nonmagnetic insulator (I) is located at one of interfaces between S and FI. In such a S/I/FI/S junction, three resonant peaks appear in the I-V curve, since the Josephson-phase couples to the EM field in the I layer.
Topological Josephson junctions (JJs), which contain Majorana bound states, are expected to exhibit 4$pi$-periodic current-phase relation, thereby resulting in doubled Shapiro steps under microwave irradiation. We performed numerical calculations of dynamical properties of topological JJs using a modified resistively and capacitively shunted junction model and extensively investigated the progressive evolution of Shapiro steps as a function of the junction parameters and microwave power and frequency. Our calculation results indicate that the suppression of odd-integer Shapiro steps, i.e., evidence of the fractional ac Josephson effect, is enhanced significantly by the increase in the junction capacitance and IcRn product as well as the decrease in the microwave frequency even for the same portion of the 4$pi$-periodic supercurrent. Our study provides the optimal conditions for observing the fractional ac Josephson effect; furthermore, our new model can be used to precisely quantify the topological supercurrent from the experimental data of topological JJs.
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