English

Universal Josephson diode effect

Superconductivity 2023-10-26 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

We propose a universal mechanism for the Josephson diode effect in short Josephson junctions. The proposed mechanism is due to finite Cooper pair momentum and is a manifestation of simultaneous breaking of inversion and time-reversal symmetries. The diode efficiency is up to 40%, which corresponds to an asymmetry between the critical currents in opposite directions Ic+/IcI_{c+}/I_{c-} \approx 230%. We show that this arises from both the Doppler shift of the Andreev bound state energies and the phase-independent asymmetric current from the continuum. Finally, we propose a simple scheme for achieving finite-momentum pairing, which does not rely on spin-orbit coupling and thus greatly expands existing platforms for the observation of supercurrent diode effects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.00831,
  title  = {Universal Josephson diode effect},
  author = {Margarita Davydova and Saranesh Prembabu and Liang Fu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.00831},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

14 pages, 10 figures total; v2: added the effect of the disorder and minor corrections; v3: fixed an error in eqs. (S7) and (14)