No Arabic abstract
We propose a way of making graphene superconductive by putting on it small superconductive islands which cover a tiny fraction of graphene area. We show that the critical temperature, T_c, can reach several Kelvins at the experimentally accessible range of parameters. At low temperatures, T<<T_c, and zero magnetic field, the density of states is characterized by a small gap E_g<T_c resulting from the collective proximity effect. Transverse magnetic field H_g(T) E_g is expected to destroy the spectral gap driving graphene layer to a kind of a superconductive glass state. Melting of the glass state into a metal occurs at a higher field H_{g2}(T).
We investigate effects of ordinary nonmagnetic disorder in the bulk of a superconductor on magnetic adatom-induced Shiba states and on the proximity-induced superconductivity in a nanowire that is tunnel coupled to the bulk superconductor. Within the formalism of self-consistent Born approximation, we show that, contrary to widespread belief, the proximity-induced topological superconductivity can be adversely affected by the bulk superconducting disorder even in the absence of any disorder in the nanowire (or the superconductor-nanowire interface) when the proximity tunnel coupling is strong. In particular, bulk disorder can effectively randomize the Shiba-state energies. In the case of a proximate semiconductor nanowire, we numerically compute the dependence of the effective disorder and pairing gap induced on the wire as a function of the semiconductor-superconductor tunnel coupling. We find that the scaling exponent of the induced disorder with respect to coupling is always larger than that of the induced gap, implying that at weak coupling, the proximity-induced pairing gap dominates, whereas at strong coupling, the induced disorder dominates. These findings bring out the importance of improving the quality of the bulk superconductor itself (in addition to the quality of the nanowire and the interface) in the experimental search for solid-state Majorana fermions in proximity-coupled hybrid structures and, in particular, points out the pitfall of pursuing strong coupling between the semiconductor and the superconductor in a goal toward having a large proximity gap. In particular, our work establishes that the bulk superconductor in strongly coupled hybrid systems for Majorana studies must be in the ultraclean limit, since otherwise the bulk disorder is likely to completely suppress all induced topological superconductivity effects.
Non-centrosymmetric superconductors exhibit the magnetoelectric effect which manifests itself in the appearance of the magnetic spin polarization in response to a dissipationless electric current (supercurrent). While much attention has been dedicated to the thermodynamic version of this phenomenon (Edelstein effect), non-equilibrium transport magnetoelectric effects have not been explored yet. We propose the magnetoelectric Andreev effect (MAE) which consists in the generation of spin-polarized triplet Andreev conductance by an electric supercurrent. The MAE stems from the spin polarization of the Cooper-pair condensate due to a supercurrent-induced non-unitary triplet pairing. We propose the realization of such non-unitary pairing and MAE in superconducting proximity structures based on two-dimensional helical metals -- strongly spin-orbit-coupled electronic systems with the Dirac spectrum such as the topological surface states. Our results uncover an unexplored route towards electrically controlled superconducting spintronics and are a smoking gun for induced unconventional superconductivity in spin-orbit-coupled materials.
Topological crystalline insulators represent a new state of matter, in which the electronic transport is governed by mirror-symmetry protected Dirac surface states. Due to the helical spin-polarization of these surface states, the proximity of topological crystalline matter to a nearby superconductor is predicted to induce unconventional superconductivity and thus to host Majorana physics. We report on the preparation and characterization of Nb-based superconducting quantum interference devices patterned on top of topological crystalline insulator SnTe thin films. The SnTe films show weak antilocalization and the weak links of the SQUID fully-gapped proximity induced superconductivity. Both properties give a coinciding coherence length of 120 nm. The SQUID oscillations induced by a magnetic field show 2$pi$ periodicity, possibly dominated by the bulk conductivity.
One-dimensional systems proximity-coupled to a superconductor can be driven into a topological superconducting phase by an external magnetic field. Here, we investigate the effect of vortices created by the magnetic field in a type-II superconductor providing the proximity effect. We identify different ways in which the topological protection of Majorana modes can be compromised and discuss strategies to circumvent these detrimental effects. Our findings are also relevant to topological phases of proximitized quantum Hall edge states.
We examine the density of states of an Andreev billiard and show that any billiard with a finite upper cut-off in the path length distribution $P(s)$ will possess an energy gap on the scale of the Thouless energy. An exact quantum mechanical calculation for different Andreev billiards gives good agreement with the semi-classical predictions when the energy dependent phase shift for Andreev reflections is properly taken into account. Based on this new semi-classical Bohr-Sommerfeld approximation of the density of states, we derive a simple formula for the energy gap. We show that the energy gap, in units of Thouless energy, may exceed the value predicted earlier from random matrix theory for chaotic billiards.