Josephson effect in type-I Weyl semimetals

Abstract

The emergent Weyl fermions in condensed matter generally break the Lorentz invariance resulting in a tilted (type-I) or over-tilted (type-II) energy dispersion. The tilting energy spectrums can lead to exotic quantum interference effects in a junction set up. Here, we theoretically investigate the Josephson current in a Weyl superconductor-Weyl (semi)metal-Weyl superconductor junction of a time-reversal (TR) broken type-I Weyl semimetal. We demonstrate that the Cooper pairs of BCS-like pairing acquire a finite momentum in case of inversion symmetric tilt. Consequently, the system exhibits tilt induced anomalous current phase relations which are manifested by supercurrent $0$-$\pi$ transition and Josephson $\phi$ junction. On the contrary, these effects remain absent in case of inversion breaking tilt and for FFLO-like pairing in the Weyl superconductor. We further chart out qualitative differences between the two distinct types of pairings by studying the critical current dependency on junction length. Our study opens a new avenue to probe the unconventional superconducting pairings in TR-broken Weyl semimetals. It is also quite interesting that the tilting in Weyl nodes naturally leads to anomalous current phase relations in this model without any magnetic manipulation!