English

Berry phase in superconducting multiterminal quantum dots

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2020-12-15 v3 Superconductivity

Abstract

We report on the study of the non-trivial Berry phase in superconducting multiterminal quantum dots biased at commensurate voltages. Starting with the time-periodic Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, we obtain a tight binding model in the Floquet space, and we solve these equations in the semiclassical limit. We observe that the parameter space defined by the contact transparencies and quartet phase splits into two components with a non-trivial Berry phase. We use the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization to calculate the Berry phase. We find that if the quantum dot level sits at zero energy, then the Berry phase takes the values φB=0\varphi_B=0 or φB=π\varphi_B=\pi. We demonstrate that this non-trivial Berry phase can be observed by tunneling spectroscopy in the Floquet spectra. Consequently, the Floquet-Wannier-Stark ladder spectra of superconducting multiterminal quantum dots are shifted by half-a-period if φB=π\varphi_B=\pi. Our numerical calculations based on Keldysh Green's functions show that this Berry phase spectral shift can be observed from the quantum dot tunneling density of states.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.03132,
  title  = {Berry phase in superconducting multiterminal quantum dots},
  author = {Benoit Doucot and Romain Danneau and Kang Yang and Jean-Guy Caputo and Régis Mélin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.03132},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

15 pages, 7 figures. Supplemental Material as ancillary file (3 pages, 5 figures), manuscript in final form

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:30:43.188Z