We report characterization and magnetic studies of mixtures of micrometer-size ribbons of Mn$_{12}$ acetate and micrometer-size particles of YBaCuO superconductor. Extremely narrow zero-field spin-tunneling resonance has been observed in the mixtures, pointing to the absence of the inhomogeneous dipolar broadening. It is attributed to the screening of the internal magnetic fields in the magnetic particles by Josephson currents between superconducting grains surrounding the particles.
We consider tunneling in a hybrid system consisting of a superconductor with two or more probe electrodes which can be either normal metals or polarized ferromagnets. In particular we study transport at subgap voltages and temperatures. Besides Andreev pair tunneling at each contact, in multi-probe structures subgap transport involves additional channels, which are due to coherent propagation of two particles (electrons or holes), each originating from a different probe electrode. The relevant processes are electron cotunneling through the superconductor and conversion of two electrons stemming from different probes in a Cooper pair. These processes are non-local and decay when the distance between the pair of involved contacts is larger than the superconducting coherence length. The conductance matrix of a the three terminal hybrid structure is calculated. The multi-probe processes enhance the conductance of each contact. If the contacts are magnetically polarized the contribution of the various conduction channels may be separately detected.
We study a two-terminal graphene Josephson junction with contacts shaped to form a narrow constriction, less than 100nm in length. The contacts are made from type II superconducting contacts and able to withstand magnetic fields high enough to reach the quantum Hall (QH) regime in graphene. In this regime, the device conductance is determined by edge states, plus the contribution from the constricted region. In particular, the constriction area can support supercurrents up to fields of ~2.5T. Moreover, enhanced conductance is observed through a wide range of magnetic fields and gate voltages. This additional conductance and the appearance of supercurrent is attributed to the tunneling between counter-propagating quantum Hall edge states along opposite superconducting contacts.
A magnetic impurity on a superconductor induces Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) bound states, detected by tunneling spectroscopy as long-lived quasiparticle excitations inside the superconducting gap. Coupled YSR states constitute basic elements to engineer artificial superconducting states, but their substrate-mediated interactions are generally weak. In this paper, we report that intramolecular (Hunds like) exchange interactions produce coupled YSR states across a molecular platform. We measured YSR spectra along a magnetic iron-porphyrin on Pb(111) and found evidences of two orbital interaction channels, which invert their particle-hole asymmetry across the molecule. Numerical calculations show that the identical YSR asymmetry pattern of the two channels is caused by two spin-hosting orbitals with opposite potential scattering and coupled strongly. Both channels can be similarly excited by tunneling electrons into each orbital, depicting a new scenario for entangled superconducting bound states using molecular platforms.
We theoretically study transport properties of voltage-biased one-dimensional superconductor--normal metal--superconductor tunnel junctions with arbitrary junction transparency where the superconductors can have trivial or nontrivial topology. Motivated by recent experimental efforts on Majorana properties of superconductor-semiconductor hybrid systems, we consider two explicit models for topological superconductors: (i) spinful p-wave, and (ii) spin-split spin-orbit-coupled s-wave. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the zero-temperature dc current $I$ and differential conductance $dI/dV$ of voltage-biased junctions with or without Majorana zero modes (MZMs). The presence of an MZM necessarily gives rise to two tunneling conductance peaks at voltages $eV = pm Delta_{mathrm{lead}}$, i.e., the voltage at which the superconducting gap edge of the lead aligns with the MZM. We find that the MZM conductance peak probed by a superconducting lead $without$ a BCS singularity has a non-universal value which decreases with decreasing junction transparency. This is in contrast to the MZM tunneling conductance measured by a superconducting lead $with$ a BCS singularity, where the conductance peak in the tunneling limit takes the quantized value $G_M = (4-pi)2e^2/h$ independent of the junction transparency. We also discuss the subharmonic gap structure, a consequence of multiple Andreev reflections, in the presence and absence of MZMs. Finally, we show that for finite-energy Andreev bound states (ABSs), the conductance peaks shift away from the gap bias voltage $eV = pm Delta_{mathrm{lead}}$ to a larger value set by the ABSs energy. Our work should have important implications for the extensive current experimental efforts toward creating topological superconductivity and MZMs in semiconductor nanowires proximity coupled to ordinary s-wave superconductors.
We study spin accumulation and spin relaxation in a superconducting nanowire. Spins are injected and detected by using a set of magnetic tunnel contact electrodes, closely spaced along the nanowire. We observe a giant enhancement of the spin accumulation of up to five orders of magnitude on transition into the superconducting state, consistent with the expected changes in the density of states. The spin relaxation length decreases by an order of magnitude from its value in the normal state. These measurements combined with our theoretical model, allow us to distinguish the individual spin flip mechanisms present in the transport channel. Our conclusion is that magnetic impurities rather than spin-orbit coupling dominate spin-flip scattering in the superconducting state.