Pair Tunneling Research Articles

Bright Side of the Coulomb Blockade

We explore the photonic (bright) side of the dynamical Coulomb blockade (DCB) by measuring the radiation emitted by a dc voltage-biased Josephson junction embedded in a microwave resonator. In this regime Cooper pair tunneling is inelastic and associated with the transfer of an energy 2eV into the resonator modes. We have measured simultaneously the Cooper pair current and the photon emission rate at the resonance frequency of the resonator. Our results show two regimes, in which each tunneling Cooper pair emits either one or two photons into the resonator. The spectral properties of the emitted radiation are accounted for by an extension to DCB theory.

Optical realization of two-boson tunneling dynamics

An optical realization of the tunneling dynamics of two interacting bosons in a double-well potential, based on light transport in a four-core microstructured fiber, is proposed. The optical setting enables one to visualize, in a purely classical system, the entire crossover from Rabi oscillations to correlated pair tunneling and to tunneling of a fragmented pair in the fermionization limit.

Theoretical Investigation of the Four-Layered Self-Doped High-TcSuperconductors: Evidence of the Pair Tunneling Effect

Based on a four-layered self-doped t-J type model and the slave-boson mean-field approach, we study theoretically the superconductivity in the electron-doped and hole-doped layers. The neighbor layers are coupled through both the single electron interlayer hopping and pair tunneling effect. The superconducting gap magnitude for the electron-doped band is nearly twice that of the hole-doped one, which contrasts with our previous understanding of the electron-hole asymmetry in high-T(c) superconductors but is consistent with recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments in four-layered materials Ba2Ca3Cu4O8F2. Our results propose that the pair tunneling effect is important to examine the multilayered superconducting materials.

Simulated radiation effects in the superinsulating phase of titanium nitride films

This paper investigates possible effects of alpha particle and ion beam irradiation on the properties of the superinsulating phase, recently observed in titanium nitride films, by using numerical simulation of particle transport. Unique physical properties of the superinsulating state are considered by relying on a two-dimensional Josephson junction array as a model of material structure. It is suggested that radiation-induced change of the Josephson junction charging energy would not affect the current-voltage characteristics of the superinsulating film significantly. However, it is theorized that a relapse to an insulating state with thermally activated resistance is possible, due to radiation-induced disruption of the fine-tuned granular structure. The breaking of Cooper pairs caused by incident and displaced ions may also destroy the conditions for a superinsulating phase to exist. Finally, even the energy loss to phonons can influence the superinsulating state, by increasing the effective temperature of the phonon thermostat, thereby reestablishing means for an energy exchange that can support Cooper pair tunneling.

Electron pair tunneling resonance in a double-dot interferometry

Electron pair tunneling resonance in a double-dot interferometry

Spin-Asymmetric Josephson Effect

We propose that with ultracold Fermi gases one can realize a spin-asymmetric Josephson effect in which the two spin components of a Cooper pair are driven asymmetrically--corresponding to driving a Josephson junction of two superconductors with different voltages V(↑) and V(↓) for spin up and down electrons, respectively. We predict that the spin up and down components oscillate at the same frequency but with different amplitudes. Furthermore our results reveal that the standard interpretation of the Josephson supercurrent in terms of coherent bosonic pair tunneling is insufficient. We provide an intuitive interpretation of the Josephson supercurrent as interference in Rabi oscillations of pairs and single particles, the latter causing the asymmetry.

Effects of Cooper pair tunneling on the electronic structure of trilayer cuprate superconductors

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiment on the optimally doped trilayer cuprate superconductors Bi2223 has revealed a layer variation of both doping density and d-wave gap. In particular, the two outer layers are overdoped with a gap which is larger than the gap for optimally doped single layer cuprates while the inner layer is underdoped with an even larger gap. Here we propose a minimal model composed of three layer t–J Hamiltonian, single particle interlayer tunneling as well as Cooper pair tunneling terms. By using renormalized mean field method, we study the superconducting order parameters and their dependence of tunneling parameters. Some relevant physical quantities have been calculated. Both tunneling effects influence the electronic structure of the trilayer system and their cooperative action may qualitatively explain the ARPES results.

0–π Transition in a Superconductor/Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot/Superconductor Junction

Josephson current, passing through a superconductor/carbon nanotube quantum dot/superconductor junction (S/CNT-QD/S), has been investigated using the nonequilibrium Green's function method in the Hartree–Fock approximation, where the characteristic two orbital degrees of freedom of the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered as the orbital pseudospins, which has an important effect on the transport properties of the S/CNT-QD/S junction. It has been found that: 1) If the orbital pseudospin doesn't conserve in the Cooper pair's tunneling process, the 0–π phase transition of the junction appears when the average electron occupation number in the CNT-QDs is odd, which is well consistent with the experimental observations. 2) More importantly, if the orbital pseudospin conserves, the 0–π phase transition could appear for the junction with an even average electron occupation number on the CNT-QDs, in contrast with an odd number of electrons in the ordinary QDs of the S/QD/S junctions, which is predicted to be po...

Thermal transport of molecular junctions in the pair tunneling regime

Charge and heat transport through a single molecule tunnel-coupled to external normal electrodes have been studied. The molecule with sufficiently strong interaction between lectrons and vibrational internal degrees of freedom can be characterized by the negative effective charging energy U$<0$. Such a molecule has been considered and modeled by the Anderson Hamiltonian. The electrical conductance, thermopower and thermal conductance of the system have been calculated as a function of gate voltage in the weak coupling limit within the rate equation approach. In the linear regime the analytic formulae for the transport coefficients in the pair dominated tunneling are presented. The effects found in the nonlinear transport include {\it inter alia} the rectification of the heat current. The sense of forward (reverse) direction, however, depends on the tuning parameter and can be controlled by the gate voltage. We also discuss the quantitation of the thermal conductance and the departures from the Wiedemann-Franz law.

Klein tunneling and zitterbewegung and the formation of a polarized p-n junction in graphene

The Klein tunneling of charge pairs in an electrostatically created p-n junction of monolayer graphene is shown to occur at an observable rate for moderate fields. The pairs undergo zitterbewegung (ZBW) in opposite directions leading to their separation and transverse dipole moment, since the valleys contribute constructively. The dipole moment depends critically on the exponential collimation characteristic of Klein tunneling and serves as a diagnostic signature of ZBW.

Fractionalization in Josephson junction arrays hinged by quantum spin Hall edges

In this paper we study a novel superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor (SC-FM-SC) Josephson junction array deposited on top of a two-dimensional quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator. The existence of Majorana bound states at the interface between SC and FM gives rise to charge-e tunneling, in addition to the usual charge-2e Cooper pair tunneling, between neighboring superconductor islands. Moreover, because Majorana fermions encode the information of charge number parity, an exact Z_2 gauge structure naturally emerges and leads to many new insulating phases, including a deconfined phase where electrons fractionalize into charge-e bosons and topological defects. A new superconductor-insulator transition has also been found.

Dynamical properties of a vibrating molecular quantum dot in a Josephson junction

We investigate dynamical transport aspects of a combined nanomechanical-superconducting device in which Cooper pair tunneling interfere with the mechanical motion of a vibrating molecular quantum dot embedded in a Josephson junction. Six different regimes for the tunneling dynamics are identified with respect to the electron level and the charging energy in the quantum dot. In five of those regimes new time-scales are introduced which are associated with the energies of the single electron transitions within the quantum dot, while there is one regime where the internal properties of the quantum dot are static.

Towards a Two-Dimensional Superconducting State ofLa2−xSrxCuO4in a Moderate External Magnetic Field

We report a novel aspect of the competition and coexistence between magnetism and superconductivity in the high-T(c) cuprate La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO4 (La214). With a modest magnetic field applied H parallel c axis, we monitored the infrared signature of pair tunneling between the CuO2 planes and discovered the complete suppression of interlayer coupling in a series of underdoped La214 single crystals. We find that the in-plane superconducting properties remain intact, in spite of enhanced magnetism in the planes.

In/extrinsic granularity in superconducting boron-doped diamond

When charge carriers are introduced in diamond, e.g. by chemical doping with Boron (B), the C 1 - x B x diamond:B can exhibit an insulator-to-metal transition ( p Mott ∼ 2 × 10 20 cm - 3 ) . Under even heavier boron doping ( n B ∼ 10 21 cm - 3 ) , diamond becomes superconducting. Using microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) we have prepared diamond:B thin films with critical offset temperatures T C below 3 K. We have investigated the transport properties of these diamond:B thin films, which show pronounced granular effects. It turns out, that this granularity is both intrinsic as well as extrinsic. The extrinsic granularity is the effect of the growth method which needs to start from a seeding of the substrate with detonation nanodiamond, which acts as nucleation centers for further MPCVD growth of the film. In using SPM/STM techniques, we also observed intrinsic granularity, meaning that within physical grains, we observe also a strong intragrain modulation of the order parameter. As a consequence of these granularities, the transport properties show evidence of (i) strong superconducting fluctuations and (ii) Cooper pair tunneling and/or quasiparticle tunneling. The latter effects explain the observed negative magnetoresistance.

Generalized dc and ac Josephson effects in antiferromagnets and in antiferromagneticd-wave superconductors

The Josephson effect is generally described as Cooper pair tunneling, but it can also be understood in a more general context. The DC Josephson effect is the pseudo-Goldstone boson of two coupled systems with a broken continuous abelian U(1) symmetry. Hence, an analog should exist for systems with broken continuous non-Abelian symmetries. To exhibit the generality of the phenomenon and make predictions from a realistic model, we study tunneling between antiferromagnets and also between antiferromagnetic d-wave superconductors. Performing a calculation analogous to that of Ambegaokar and Baratoff for the Josephson junction, we find an equilibrium current of the staggered magnetization through the junction that, in antiferromagnets, is proportional to s_L X s_R where s_L and s_R are the Neel vectors on either sides of the junction. Microscopically, this effect exists because of the coherent tunneling of spin-one particle-hole pairs. In the presence of a magnetic field which is different on either sides of the junction, we find an analog of the AC Josephson effect where the angle between Neel vectors depends on time. In the case of antiferromagnetic d-wave superconductors we predict that there is a contribution to the critical current that depends on the antiferromagnetic order and a contribution to the spin-critical current that depends on superconducting order. The latter contributions come from tunneling of the triplet Cooper pair that is necessarily present in the ground state of an antiferromagnetic d-wave superconductor. All these effects appear to leading order in the square of the tunneling matrix elements.

Interspecies tunneling in one-dimensional Bose mixtures

We study the ground-state properties and quantum dynamics of few-boson mixtures with strong interspecies repulsion in one-dimensional traps. If one species localizes at the center, e.g., due to a very large mass compared to the other component, it represents an effective barrier for the latter, and the system can be mapped onto identical bosons in a double well. For weaker localization, the barrier atoms begin to respond to the light component, leading to an induced attraction between the mobile atoms that may even outweigh their bare intraspecies repulsion. To explain the resulting effects, we derive an effective Hubbard model for the lighter species accounting for the back action of the barrier in correction terms to the lattice parameters. Also the tunneling is drastically affected: by varying the degree of localization of the ``barrier'' atoms, the dynamics of intrinsically noninteracting bosons can change from Rabi oscillations to effective pair tunneling. For identical fermions (or fermionized bosons), this leads to the tunneling of attractively bound pairs.

Microscopic Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer formulation of the critical temperature of multilayer copper-oxide superconductors

We study superconductivity in multilayer copper oxides, in the frame of a realistic microscopic formulation. Solving the full temperature dependent BCS gap equations, we obtain a maximum in the transition temperature Tc for M=3 or 4 CuO2 layers in the unit cell for appropriate values of the interlayer tunneling (negative pair tunneling), and via the consideration of the doping imbalance between the inner and outer layers. This is the ubiquitous experimental result for Ca intercalated copper oxides, as opposed to other intercalating elements. Further, using a restricted set of parameters, we obtain an exact fit of Tc(M=1-4) for five different Ca intercalated homologuous copper oxide families.

Near-Quantum-Limited Operation of a Charge-Sensitive Electrical Amplifier

Here, we report the operation of a superconducting single-electron transistor (S-SET) as a fast and nearly quantum-limited charge-sensitive amplifier. By operating the S-SET such that Cooper pair tunneling is resonant across both of its tunnel junctions, we are able to achieve an excellent charge sensitivity of δq = 1.6 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-6</sup> e/√(Hz), while also minimizing back action. We find that near its optimal operating point, the S-SET can have both a very low noise temperature T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</sub> ≈ 50 mK and a large power gain A <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SET</sub> >;>; 1. These results indicate that our S-SET operates within a factor of 2 of the quantum limit.

Importance of interlayer pair tunneling: A variational perspective

We study the effect of interlayer pair tunneling in a bilayer superconductor where each layer is described by a two dimensional t– J model and the two layers are connected by the Josephson pair tunneling term. We study this model using a grand canonical variational Monte Carlo (GVMC) method, for which we develop a new algorithm to perform Monte Carlo simulation of a system with fluctuating particle number. The variational wavefunction is taken to be the product of two Gutzwiller projected d-wave BCS wavefunctions with variable particle densities, one for each layer. We calculate the energy of the above state as a function of the d-wave superconducting gap parameter, Δ . We find that the interlayer pair tunneling energy, E ⊥ shows interesting variation with Δ . E ⊥ tends to enhance the optimal value of Δ , thereby the superconducting pairing. However the magnitude of the tunneling energy is found to be too small to have any appreciable effect on the physical properties. While the result is supported by early experiments and hence may appear known to the community, the current work presents a new approach to the problem and confirms the diminished role of interlayer pair tunneling by directly calculating its contribution to superconducting condensation energy.

Quantum supercurrent and Andreev reflection in silicon nanostructures

The tunneling spectroscopy is used for studying the hole transport in a sandwich nanostructure of the superconductor-ultra-narrow-self-assembled-p-silicon-quantum-well (Si-QW)-superconductor type on the n-Si (100) surface; the quantum well’s width is less than the coherence length and the Fermi wave-length. The high-resolution tunneling I–V characteristics display the supercurrent quantization, the characteristics of which depend on the positions of the dimensional-quantization levels for holes in the Si-QW. The correlation in the tunneling of single holes and Cooper pairs manifests itself in identical oscillations of the I–V characteristics for the supercurrent at T Tc. In addition to the Josephson effect, the forward and reverse I–V characteristics for the first time reveal the processes of multiple Andreev reflection of two-dimensional holes in the Si-QW, which cause the microscopic mechanism responsible for the superconducting proximity effect. The investigation of the two-dimensional hole’s conductivity in the Si-QW plane indicates the presence of coherent tunneling under conditions of the spin-dependent multiple Andreev reflection between the superconducting δ] barriers confining it.