Richardson model with complex level structure and spin-orbit coupling for hybrid superconducting islands: Stepwise suppression of pairing and magnetic pinning

Abstract

An epitaxial semiconductor-superconductor nanowire is a superconducting system with a complex level structure originating from hybridization: in addition to a dense set of higher-energy states derived predominantly from the metallic superconducting shell above the bulk gap Δ, there is a smaller number of lower-energy proximitized states from the semiconducting core that define the induced gap Δ*. Nanostructures built from such nanowires can furthermore incorporate quantum dots in order to obtain localized spins for storing and manipulating quantum information. We discuss the magnetic field dependence in three devices with different combinations of embedded quantum dots and superconducting islands. For strong fields, they show pinning of excitation energies to a uniform spacing, even if for weak fields they have nonuniversal properties with different behaviors for even and odd numbers of confined electrons. We propose a quantum impurity model for hybrid devices that incorporates all relevant physical effects. We show that the model accounts for the key observations and permits unambiguous interpretation in terms of many-particle states. In particular, we study the replicas of the Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states in the hybrid gap, their collapse and oscillation around zero bias with increasing field, and the strong smoothing effect of the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on these oscillations. We propose that the SOC-induced mixing of many-body states is a generic mechanism and that magnetic pinning is likely to be a ubiquitous feature in hybrid nanowires.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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