Josephson junctions were photogenerated in underdoped thin films of the YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{6+x}$ family using a near-field scanning optical microscope. The observation of the Josephson effect for separations as large as 100 nm between two wires indicates the existence of an anomalously large proximity effect and show that the underdoped insulating material in the gap of the junction is readily perturbed into the superconducting state. The critical current of the junctions was found to be consistent with the conventional Josephson relationship. This result constrains the applicability of SO(5) theory to explain the phase diagram of high critical temperature superconductors.
The anomalous proximity effect in dirty superconducting junctions is one of most striking phenomena highlighting the profound nature of Majorana bound states and odd-frequency Cooper pairs in topological superconductors. Motivated by the recent experimental realization of planar topological Josephson junctions, we describe the anomalous proximity effect in a superconductor/semiconductor hybrid, where an additional dirty normal-metal segment is extended from a topological Josephson junction. The topological phase transition in the topological Josephson junction is accompanied by a drastic change in the low-energy transport properties of the attached dirty normal-metal. The quantization of the zero-bias differential conductance, which appears only in the topologically nontrivial phase, is caused by the penetration of the Majorana bound states and odd-frequency Cooper pairs into a dirty normal-metal segment. As a consequence, we propose a practical experiment for observing the anomalous proximity effect.
We investigate the effects of Andreev bound states due to the unconventional pairing on the inverse proximity effect of ferromagnet/superconductor junctions. Utilizing quasiclassical Eilenberger theory, we obtain the magnetization penetrating into the superconductor. We show that in a wide parameter range the direction of the induced magnetization is determined by two factors: whether Andreev bound states are present at the junction interface and the sign of the spin-mixing angle. In particular, when Andreev bound states appear at the interface, the direction of the induced magnetization is opposite to that without Andreev bound states. We also clarify the conditions under which the inverted induced magnetization appears. Applying this novel effect helps distinguishing the pairing symmetry of a superconductor.
The transport properties of a topological Josephson junction fabricated from a magnetically doped topological insulator (TI) were investigated. The conductance spectra of the Nb/Fe-Bi$_2$Te$_2$Se/Nb junction below 1 K showed an unusual trident-shaped zero-bias conductance peak with a tiny peak width of $sim$ 6 $mu$V. The central peak of the trident peak presents the dc-Josephson current, and the side peaks may reflect an induced unconventional Cooper pairing. Additionally, the critical currents followed inverse to temperature, which may also reflect the presence of an unconventional proximity effect. Furthermore, microwave irradiation derived a drastic change in the conductance spectra from the peak structure into oscillatory ones, a hallmark of the ac-Josephson supercurrent. The current-phase relation of the ac-Josephson effect under high power radiofrequency-irradiation was found to be 4$pi$-periodic. The results suggest that the junction based on magnetically doped 3D TIs may realize an unconventional Cooper pairing, thus enabling access to the basic physics of Majorana bound states and unconventional superconductivity.
Magneto-fluctuations of the normal resistance R_N have been reproducibly observed in high critical temp erature superconductor (HTS) grain boundary junctions, at low temperatures. We attribute them to mesoscopic transport in narrow channels across the grain boundary line. The Thouless energy appears to be the relevant energy scale. Our findings have significant implications on quasiparticle relaxation and coherent transport in HTS grain boundaries.
We report experiments on micron-scale normal metal loop connected by superconducting wires, where the sample geometry enables full modulation of the thermal activation barrier with applied magnetic flux, resembling a symmetric quantum interference device. We find that except a constant factor of five, the modulation of the barrier can be well fitted by the Ambegaokar-Halperin model for a resistively shunted junction, extended here to a proximity junction with flux-tunable coupling energy estimated using quasiclassical theory. This observation sheds light on the understanding of effect of thermal fluctuation in proximity junctions, while may also lead to an unprecedented level of control in quantum interference devices.