Josephson current between chiral superconductors

Abstract

We study chiral interface Andreev bound states and their influence on the Josephson current between clean superconductors. Possible examples are superconducting Sr2RuO4 and the B phase of the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3. We show that, under certain conditions, the low-energy chiral surface states enhance the critical current of symmetric tunnel junctions at low temperatures. The enhancement is substantially more pronounced in quantum point contacts. In classical junctions dispersive chiral states result in a logarithmic dependence of the critical current. This logarithmic behavior contains the temperature, the barrier transparency, and the broadening of the bound states and depends on the detailed relation between these parameters. The Josephson current through the domain wall does not acquire this logarithmic enhancement, although the contribution from the bound states is important in this case as well.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

Similar papers