No Arabic abstract
We consider a planar SIS-type Josephson junction between diffusive superconductors (S) through an insulating tunnel interface (I). We construct fully self-consistent perturbation theory with respect to the interface conductance. As a result, we find correction to the first Josephson harmonic and calculate the second Josephson harmonic. At arbitrary temperatures, we correct previous results for the nonsinusoidal current-phase relation in Josephson tunnel junctions, which were obtained with the help of conjectured form of solution. Our perturbation theory also describes the difference between the phases of the order parameter and of the anomalous Green functions.
We solve the coherent multiple Andreev reflection (MAR) problem and calculate current-voltage characteristics (IVCs) for Josephson SINIS junctions, where S are local-equilibrium superconducting reservoirs, I denotes tunnel barriers, and N is a short diffusive normal wire, the length of which is much smaller than the coherence length, and the resistance is much smaller than the resistance of the tunnel barriers. The charge transport regime in such junctions qualitatively depends on a characteristic value gamma = Delta tau_d of relative phase shifts between the electrons and retro-reflected holes accumulated during the dwell time tau_d. In the limit of small electron-hole dephasing gamma << 1, our solution recovers a known formula for a short mesoscopic connector extended to the MAR regime. At large dephasing, the subharmonic gap structure in the IVC scales with 1/ gamma, which thus plays the role of an effective tunneling parameter. In this limit, the even gap subharmonics are resonantly enhanced, and the IVC exhibits portions with negative differential resistance.
We study the spectrum of Andreev bound states and Josephson currents across a junction of $N$ superconducting wires which may have $s$- or $p$-wave pairing symmetries and develop a scattering matrix based formalism which allows us to address transport across such junctions. For $N ge 3$, it is well known that Berry curvature terms contribute to the Josephson currents; we chart out situations where such terms can have relatively large effects. For a system of three $s$- or three $p$-wave superconductors, we provide analytic expressions for the Andreev bound state energies and study the Josephson currents in response to a constant voltage applied across one of the wires; we find that the integrated transconductance at zero temperature is quantized to integer multiples of $4e^2/h$, where $e$ is the electron charge and $h = 2pi hbar$ is Plancks constant. For a sinusoidal current with frequency $omega$ applied across one of the wires in the junction, we find that Shapiro plateaus appear in the time-averaged voltage $langle V_1 rangle$ across that wire for any rational fractional multiple (in contrast to only integer multiples in junctions of two wires) of $2e langle V_1 rangle/(hbar omega)$. We also use our formalism to study junctions of two $p$- and one $s$-wave wires. We find that the corresponding Andreev bound state energies depend on the spin of the Bogoliubov quasiparticles; this produces a net magnetic moment in such junctions. The time variation of these magnetic moments may be controlled by an external applied voltage across the junction. We discuss experiments which may test our theory.
We present an exhaustive study of the coherent heat transport through superconductor-ferromagnet(S-F) Josephson junctions including a spin-filter (I$_{sf}$) tunneling barrier. By using the quasiclassical Keldysh Greens function technique we derive a general expression for the heat current flowing through a S/F/I$_{sf}$/F/S junction and analyze the dependence of the thermal conductance on the spin-filter efficiency, the phase difference between the superconductors and the magnetization direction of the ferromagnetic layers. In the case of non-collinear magnetizations we show explicitly the contributions to the heat current stemming from the singlet and triplet components of the superconducting condensate. We also demonstrate that the magnetothermal resistance ratio of a S/F/I$_{sf}$/F/S heat valve can be increased by the spin-filter effect under suitable conditions.
We present a full microscopic theory based on the SU(2) covariant formulation of the quasiclassical formalism to describe the Josephson current through an extended superconductor-normal metal- superconductor (SNS) diffusive junction with an intrinsic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in the presence of a spin-splitting field h. We demonstrate that the ground state of the junction corresponds to a finite intrinsic phase difference 0 < {phi}0 < 2{pi} between the superconductor electrodes provided that both, h and the SOC-induced SU(2) Lorentz force are finite. In the particular case of a Rashba SOC we present analytic and numerical results for {phi}0 as a function of the strengths of the spin fields, the length of the junction, the temperature and the properties of SN interfaces.
We present a quantitative study of the current-voltage characteristics (CVC) of diffusive superconductor/ insulator/ ferromagnet/ superconductor (SIFS) tunnel Josephson junctions. In order to obtain the CVC we calculate the density of states (DOS) in the F/S bilayer for arbitrary length of the ferromagnetic layer, using quasiclassical theory. For a ferromagnetic layer thickness larger than the characteristic penetration depth of the superconducting condensate into the F layer, we find an analytical expression which agrees with the DOS obtained from a self-consistent numerical method. We discuss general properties of the DOS and its dependence on the parameters of the ferromagnetic layer. In particular we focus our analysis on the DOS oscillations at the Fermi energy. Using the numerically obtained DOS we calculate the corresponding CVC and discuss their properties. Finally, we use CVC to calculate the macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) escape rate for the current biased SIFS junctions by taking into account the dissipative correction due to the quasiparticle tunneling. We show that the influence of the quasiparticle dissipation on the macroscopic quantum dynamics of SIFS junctions is small, which is an advantage of SIFS junctions for superconducting qubits applications.