Ramp Josephson junctions of Al/Ti/Sr2RuO4: Observation of single-domain quantum oscillations and the detection of chiral surface current

Abstract

The determination of how the phase of the superconducting order parameter in a superconductor varies with the spatial direction, which can be done only through Josephson-effect-based phase-sensitive measurements, is crucial for the establishment of the precise pairing symmetry of the superconductor. So far, such measurements have been done on high-Tc cuprate superconductors but only in a couple of directions for Sr2RuO4 because of the difficulty in preparing Josephson junctions between Sr2RuO4 and an s-wave superconductor with a chosen mutual orientation. Another long-standing issue in Sr2RuO4, which was shown previously to feature a spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry by muon spin rotation and other measurements, is that the expected presence of chiral surface currents, domains, and domain walls is yet to be explicitly shown experimentally. To address these issues, we have long sought the preparation of high-quality Josephson junctions between Sr2RuO4 and a conventional s-wave with a controllable orientation relative to the symmetry axes in Sr2RuO4. We report in this article the successful fabrication of ramp Josephson junctions of Al/Ti/Sr2RuO4 on thin single crystals of Sr2RuO4 obtained by mechanical exfoliation. These junctions were found to show high-quality quantum oscillations consistent with a single-domain Josephson coupling. The normal junction resistance was found to depend extremely sensitively on the supercurrent flowing in the Sr2RuO4 crystal on which the Josephson junction was made. This finding was used in the present work to provide an estimate of the size of the chiral surface current, which is shown to agree with its upper bound established previously.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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