Posts in category Research

Another publication with Grenoble friends. The preprint is available for almost a year, it had a complex history of submissions and interactions with referees 🙁 Anyway, it feels like my best paper so far.

Title: Multi-terminal Josephson junctions as topological matter
Authors: Roman-Pascal Riwar, Manuel Houzet, Julia S. Meyer & Yuli V. Nazarov
Ref: Nature Communications 7, Article number: 11167, doi:10.1038/ncomms11167

Abstract: Topological materials and their unusual transport properties are now at the focus of modern experimental and theoretical research. Their topological properties arise from the bandstructure determined by the atomic composition of a material and as such are difficult to tune and naturally restricted to ≤3 dimensions. Here we demonstrate that n-terminal Josephson junctions with conventional superconductors may provide novel realizations of topology in n−1 dimensions, which have similarities, but also marked differences with existing 2D or 3D topological materials. For n≥4, the Andreev subgap spectrum of the junction can accommodate Weyl singularities in the space of the n−1 independent superconducting phases, which play the role of bandstructure quasimomenta. The presence of these Weyl singularities enables topological transitions that are manifested experimentally as changes of the quantized transconductance between two voltage-biased leads, the quantization unit being 4e2/h, where e is the electric charge and h is the Planck constant.

This is the title of a recent publication with my Grenoble friends.
Phys. Rev. B 93, 104521 – Published 21 March 2016
Text at Arxive
Abstract:
We study the density of states in disordered s-wave superconductors with a small gap anisotropy. We consider disorder in the form of common nonmagnetic scatterers and pairing-potential impurities, which interact with electrons via an electric potential and a local distortion of the superconducting gap. Using quasiclassical Green functions, we determine the bound-state spectrum at a single impurity and the density of states at a finite concentration of impurities. We show that, if the gap is isotropic, an isolated impurity with suppressed pairing supports an infinite number of Andreev states. With growing impurity concentration, the energy-dependent density of states evolves from a sharp gap edge with an impurity band below it to a smeared BCS singularity in the so-called universal limit. Within one spin sector, pairing-potential impurities and weak spin-polarized magnetic impurities have essentially the same effect on the density of states. We note that, if a gap anisotropy is present, the density of states becomes sensitive to ordinary potential disorder, and the existence of Andreev states localized at pairing-potential impurities requires special conditions. An unusual feature related to the anisotropy is a nonmonotonic dependence of the gap edge smearing on impurity concentration.