We study junctions of single-channel spinless Luttinger liquids using bosonisation. We generalize earlier studies by allowing the junction to be superconducting and find new charge non-conserving low energy fixed points. We establish the existence of $g \leftrightarrow 1/g$ duality (where $g$ is the Luttinger Liquid parameter) between the charge conserving (normal) junction and the charge non-conserving (superconducting) junction by evaluating and comparing the scaling dimensions of various operators around the fixed points in normal and superconducting sectors of the theory. For the most general two-wire junction, we show that there are two conformally invariant one-parameter families of fixed points which are also connected by a duality transformation. We also show that the stable fixed point for the two-wire superconducting junction corresponds to the situation where the crossed Andreev reflection is perfect between the wires. For the three-wire junction, we study, in particular, the superconducting analogs of the chiral, $D_P$ and the disconnected fixed points obtained earlier in the literature in the context of charge conserving three-wire junctions. We show that these fixed points can be stabilized for $g < 1$ (repulsive electrons) within the superconducting sector of the theory which makes them experimentally relevant.
We explore the possibility to break time reversal invariance at the junction of quantum wires. The universal features in the bulk of the wires are described by the anyon Luttinger liquid. A simple necessary and sufficient condition for the breaking of time reversal invariance is formulated in terms of the scattering matrix at the junction. The phase diagram of a junction with generic number of wires is investigated in this framework. We give an explicit classification of those critical points which can be reached by bosonization and study the interplay between their stability and symmetry cont…
We study a junction of three quantum wires enclosing a magnetic flux. This is the simplest problem of a quantum junction between Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids in which Fermi statistics enter in a non-trivial way. We present a direct connection between this problem and the dissipative Hofstadter problem, or quantum Brownian motion in two dimensions in a periodic potential and an external magnetic field, which in turn is connected to open string theory in a background electromagnetic field. We find non-trivial fixed points corresponding to a chiral conductance tensor leading to an asymmetric flow o…
We study a junction of three quantum wires enclosing a magnetic flux. The wires are modeled as single-channel spinless Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. This is the simplest problem of a quantum junction between Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids in which Fermi statistics enter in a non-trivial way. We study the problem using a mapping onto the dissipative Hofstadter model, describing a single particle moving on a plane in a magnetic field and a periodic potential coupled to a harmonic oscillator bath. Alternatively we study the problem by identifying boundary conditions corresponding to the low energy fixe…
We study the conductance of three or more semi-infinite wires which meet at a junction. The electrons in the wires are taken to interact weakly with each other through a short-range density-density interaction, and they encounter a general scattering matrix at the junction. We derive the renormalization group equations satisfied by the S-matrix, and we identify its fixed points and their stabilities. The conductance between any pair of wires is then studied as a function of physical parameters such as temperature. We discuss the possibility of observing the effects of junctions in present day …
Conductance is related to dynamical correlation functions which can be calculated with \textit{time-dependent} methods. Using boundary conformal field theory, we relate the conductance tensors of quantum junctions of multiple wires to static correlation functions in a finite system. We then propose a general method for determining the conductance through \textit{time-independent} calculations alone. Applying the method to a Y-junction of interacting quantum wires, we numerically verify the theoretical prediction for the conductance of the chiral fixed-point of the Y-junction and then calculate…
We analyze the charge and thermal transport at a junction of interacting quantum wires close to equilibrium. Within the framework of Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids, we compute the thermal conductance for a wide class of boundary conditions and detail the physical processes leading to the breakdown of the Wiedemann-Franz law at the junction. We show how connecting external reservoirs to the quantum wires affects the conductance tensors close to the various fixed points of the phase diagram of the junction. We therefore distinguish two types of violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law: a "trivial" one, …
Various properties of mesoscopic two-dimensional Josephson junction arrays are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to structure of the topological excitations, charges and vortices, which are shown to be dual to each other. This duality persists in the presence of external magnetic fields and offset charges, which influence vortices and charges in an equivalent way. A double-layer junction array is also considered, where an even further reaching duality is discovered.
Within the framework of boundary conformal field theory, we evaluate the conductance of stable fixed points of junctions of two and three quantum wires with different Luttinger parameters. For two wires, the physical properties are governed by a single effective Luttinger parameters for each of the charge and spin sectors. We present numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group calculations of the conductance of a junction of two chains of interacting spinless fermions with different interaction strengths, obtained using a recently developed method [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 226803 (2010)]. The …
We study the tunneling density of states (TDOS) for a junction of three Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid wires. We show that there are fixed points which allow for the enhancement of the TDOS, which is unusual for Luttinger liquids. The distance from the junction over which this enhancement occurs is of the order of x = v/(2 ω), where v is the plasmon velocity and ωis the bias frequency. Beyond this distance, the TDOS crosses over to the standard bulk value independent of the fixed point describing the junction. This finite range of distances opens up the possibility of experimentally probing the enh…
We have measured the current-voltage characteristics of a single Josephson junction placed in a high impedance environment. The transfer of Cooper pairs through the junction is governed by overdamped quasicharge dynamics, leading to Coulomb blockade and Bloch oscillations. Exact duality exists to the standard overdamped phase dynamics of a Josephson junction, resulting in a dual shape of the current-voltage characteristic, with current and voltage changing roles. We demonstrate this duality with experiments which allow for a quantitative comparison with a theory that includes the effect of flu…
We investigate rectification of a low-frequency ac bias in Y-junctions of one-channel Luttinger liquid wires with repulsive electron interaction. Rectification emerges due to three scatterers in the wires. We find that it is possible to achieve a higher rectification current in a Y-junction than in a single wire with an asymmetric scatterer at the same interaction strength and voltage bias. The rectification effect is the strongest in the absence of the time-reversal symmetry. In that case, the maximal rectification current can be comparable with the total current $\sim e^2V/h$ even for low vo…
The non-linear current-voltage characteristic of a tunnel junction between two Luttinger systems is calculated for an interaction with finite range. Coulomb blockade features are found. The dissipative resistance, the capacitance and the external impedance, which were introduced ad hoc in earlier theories, are obtained in terms of the electron-electron interaction. The frequency dependence of the impedance is given by the excitation spectrum of the electrons.
We consider a honeycomb network built of quantum wires, with each node of the network having a Y-junction of three wires with a ring through which flux can be inserted. The junctions are the basic circuit elements for the network, and they are characterized by 3 x 3 conductance tensors. The low energy stable fixed point tensor conductances result from quantum effects, and are determined by the strength of the interactions in each wire and the magnetic flux through the ring. We consider the limit where there is decoherence in the wires between any two nodes, and study the array as a network of …
We investigate transport of spinless fermions through a single site dot junction of M one-dimensional quantum wires. The semi-infinite wires are described by a tight-binding model. Each wire consists of two parts: the non-interacting leads and a region of finite extent in which the fermions interact via a nearest-neighbor interaction. The functional renormalization group method is used to determine the flow of the linear conductance as a function of a low-energy cutoff for a wide range of parameters. Several fixed points are identified and their stability is analyzed. We determine the scaling …
We investigate transport of correlated fermions through a junction of three one-dimensional quantum wires pierced by a magnetic flux. We determine the flow of the conductance as a function of a low-energy cutoff in the entire parameter space. For attractive interactions and generic flux the fixed point with maximal asymmetry of the conductance is the stable one, as conjectured recently. For repulsive interactions and arbitrary flux we find a line of stable fixed points with vanishing conductance as well as stable fixed points with symmetric conductance (4/9)(e^2/h).
We study theoretically the current-voltage characteristics, shot noise, and full counting statistics of a quantum wire double barrier structure. We model each wire segment by a spinless Luttinger liquid. Within the sequential tunneling approach, we describe the system's dynamics using a master equation. We show that at finite bias the non-equilibrium distribution of plasmons in the central wire segment leads to increased average current, enhanced shot noise, and full counting statistics corresponding to a super-Poissonian process. These effects are particularly pronounced in the strong interac…
We study power dissipation for systems of multiple quantum wires meeting at a junction, in terms of a current splitting matrix (M) describing the junction. We present a unified framework for studying dissipation for wires with either interacting electrons (i.e., Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid wires with Fermi liquid leads) or non-interacting electrons. We show that for a given matrix M, the eigenvalues of M^T M characterize the dissipation, and the eigenvectors identify the combinations of bias voltages which need to be applied to the different wires in order to maximize the dissipation associated …
We have constructed a theory of dual canonical formalism to study the quantum competing systems. In such a system, as the relationship between current and voltage of each, we assumed the duality conditions. We considered competing system of two types. One type of these system are composed of the sandwich structure by SC(superconductor)/SI(superinsulator)/SC junction, and its dual junction is consists of the sandwich structure by SI/SC/SI junction. Another one type of these system is consists of the sandwich structure by SC/FM(ferromagnet)/SC junction. and its dual junction is consists of the s…
We consider a wire network of ferromagnetic impurities on the surface of an $s$-wave superconductor with strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction. Within the topological phase, zero-energy Majorana fermions appear at wire end-points as well as at junctions between an odd number of wire segments, while no low-energy states are present at junctions between an even number of wire segments, providing strong experimentally accessible signatures for Majorana fermions. We also investigate the quasiparticle energy gap with respect to varying the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and magnetic impurity strength.
The electroluminescence of a polythiophene wire suspended between two metallic electrodes is probed using a scanning tunneling microscope. Under positive sample voltage, the spectral and voltage dependencies of the emitted light are consistent with the fluorescence of the wire junction mediated by localized plasmons. This emission is strongly attenuated for the opposite polarity. Both emission mechanism and polarity dependence are similar to what occurs in organic light emitting diodes (OLED) but at the level of a single molecular wire.
We study a system consisting of a junction of N quantum wires, where the junction is characterized by a scalar S-matrix, and an impurity spin is coupled to the electrons close to the junction. The wires are modeled as weakly interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. We derive the renormalization group equations for the Kondo couplings of the spin to the electronic modes on different wires, and analyze the renormalization group flows and fixed points for different values of the initial Kondo couplings and of the junction S-matrix (such as the decoupled S-matrix and the Griffiths S-matrix). We gen…
We develop a method to extract the universal conductance of junctions of multiple quantum wires, a property of systems connected to reservoirs, from static ground-state computations in closed finite systems. The method is based on a key relationship, derived within the framework of boundary conformal field theory, between the conductance tensor and certain ground state correlation functions. Our results provide a systematic way of studying quantum transport in the presence of strong electron-electron interactions using efficient numerical techniques such as the standard time-independent densit…
Magnetic tunnel junctions are nanoscale spintronic devices with microwave generation and detection capabilities. Here we use the rectification effect called "spin-diode" in a magnetic tunnel junction to wirelessly detect the microwave emission of another junction in the auto-oscillatory regime. We show that the rectified spin-diode voltage measured at the receiving junction end can be reconstructed from the independently measured auto-oscillation and spin diode spectra in each junction. Finally we adapt the auto-oscillator model to the case of spin-torque oscillator and spin-torque diode and w…
We study charge transport through $N$-lead junctions ($N\geq 3$) of spinless Luttinger liquid wires with bias voltages applied to Fermi-liquid reservoirs. In particular, we consider a Y junction, which is a setup characteristic of the tunneling experiment. In this setup, the strength of electron-electron interactions in one of the arms ("tunneling tip") is different from that in the other two arms (which form together the "main wire"). For a generic single-particle $S$ matrix of the junction, we find that the bias voltage $V$ applied---even symmetrically---to the main wire generates a current …
Structural disorder is present in almost all experimental measurements of electronic transport through single molecules or molecular wires. To assess its influence on the conductance is computationally demanding, because a large number of conformations must be considered. Here we analyze an approximate recursive layer Green function approach for the ballistic transport through quasi one-dimensional nano-junctions. We find a rapid convergence of the method with its control parameter, the layer thickness, and good agreement with existing experimental and theoretical data. Because the computation…
We investigate the dynamics of hybrid junctions made of the topological superconductor (TS) and normal metal (N) wires. We consider an X-Y-Z configuration for the junctions where X, Y, Z = TS, N. We assume the wires X and Z being semi-infinite and in thermal equilibrium. We connect the wires X and Z through the short Y wire at some time, and numerically study time-evolution of the full device. For TS-N-TS device, we find a persistent, oscillating electrical current at both junctions even when there is no thermal or voltage bias, and the TS wires are identical. The amplitude and period of the o…
Exact Duality at Low Energy in a Josephson Tunnel Junction Coupled to a Transmission Line
Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques（巴黎西岱大学，法国国家科学研究中心，物质与量子现象）；Physics Department, University of California Santa Barbara（加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校物理系）；Google Quantum AI（谷歌量子AI）
We study the effects of electron-electron interactions on the transport properties of a junction of three quantum wires enclosing a magnetic flux. The wires are modeled as single channel spin-1/2 Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. The system exhibits a rich phase diagram as a function of the electronic interaction strength, which includes a chiral fixed point with an asymmetric current flow highly sensitive to the sign of the flux, and another fixed point where pair tunneling dominates, similarly to the case of spinless electrons. While in the case of spinless electrons the perturbations that corresp…
Josephson junctions and superconducting wires when probed with current pulses exhibit stochastic switching from superconducting to a stable non-zero voltage state. Electrical current dependence of the switching probability (so called S-curve) or switching current distribution is a fingerprint of the physics governing the escape process. This work addresses the criterion of independent switching event in a series of switching experiments. Treating Josephson junction as an electrical coin with current-tuned switching probability we investigate effect of correlation between switching events on th…
The conductance fluctuations of a metallic wire which is interrupted by a small tunnel junction has been explored experimentally. In this system, the bias voltage V, which drops almost completely inside the tunnel barrier, is used to probe the energy dependence of conductance fluctuations due to disorder in the wire. We find that the variance of the fluctuations is directly proportional to V. The experimental data are consistently described by a theoretical model with two phenomenological parameters: the phase breaking time at low temperatures and the diffusion coefficient.
An integral part of scattering theory calculations in continuum quantum systems involves identifying appropriate boundary conditions in addition to writing down the correct Hamiltonian. In the simplest problem of scattering in one dimensional lattice, scattering due to an on-site potential and scattering due to an unequal bond (in otherwise translationally invariant lattice) give different results for scattering amplitudes. While the scattering problems in the continuum and the lattice models can be mapped to one another for scattering due to on-site potential, the equivalent continuum model f…
We investigate the physics of coherent quantum phase slips in two distinct circuits containing small Josephson junctions: (i) a single junction embedded in an inductive environment and (ii) a long chain of junctions. Starting from the standard Josephson Hamiltonian, the single junction circuit can be analyzed using quasi-classical methods; we formulate the conditions under which the resulting quasi-charge dynamics is exactly dual to the usual phase dynamics associated with Josephson tunneling. For the chain we use the fact that its collective behavior can be characterized by one variable: the …
We demonstrate possible scenarios for production of pure spin current and large tunnelling magnetoresistance ratios from elastic co-tunnelling and crossed Andreev reflection across a superconducting junction comprising of normal metal-superconductor-normal metal, where, the normal metal is a one-dimensional interacting quantum wire. We show that there are fixed points in the theory which correspond to the case of pure spin current. We analyze the influence of electron-electron interaction and see how it stabilizes or de-stabilizes the production of pure spin current. These fixed points can be …
We formulate and apply a low-energy transport theory for hybrid quantum devices containing junctions of topological superconductor (TS) wires and conventional normal (N) or superconducting (S) leads. We model TS wires as spinless $p$-wave superconductors and derive their boundary Keldysh Green's function, capturing both the Majorana end state and continuum quasiparticle excitations in a unified manner. We also specify this Green's function for a finite-length TS wire. Junctions connecting different parts of the device are described by the standard tunneling Hamiltonian. Using this Hamiltonian …
We study adiabatic charge pumping through a quantum dot placed at the junction of $N$ quantum wires. We explicitly map out the pattern of pumped charge as a function of the time-varying tunneling parameters coupling the wires to the dot and the phase between any two time varying parameters controlling the shape of the dot. We find that with $N-2$ time-independent well-coupled leads, the maximum pumped charge in the remaining two leads is strongly suppressed with increasing $N$, leading to the possibility of tuning of the pumped charge, by modulating the coupling of the $N-2$ leads.
In this work we show that Rashba-based topological superconductor nanowires, where the spin-orbit coupling may change its sign, support three topological phases protected by chiral symmetry. When a superconducting phase gradient is applied over the interface of the two nontrivial phases, the Andreev spectrum is qualitatively phase shifted by πcompared to usual Majorana weak links. The topological π-junction has the striking property of exhibiting maximum supercurrent in the vicinity of vanishing phase difference. Qualitative features of the junction are robust against disorder and magnetic fie…
We have studied the critical current of a diffusive superconductor - normal metal - superconductor (SNS) Josephson junction as a function of the electron energy distribution in the normal region. This was realized in a 4 terminal device, in which a mesoscopic gold wire between two electron reservoirs is coupled in its center to two superconducting electrodes. By varying the length of the wire and applying a voltage over it we are able to control the electron distribution function in the center of the wire, which forms the normal region of the SNS junction. The observed voltage and temperature …
We theoretically investigate Josephson junctions with a phase shift of $π$ in various proximity induced one-dimensional superconductor models. One of the salient experimental signatures of topological superconductors, namely the fractionalized $4 π$ periodic Josephson effect, is closely related to the occurrence of a characteristic zero energy bound state in such junctions. We make a detailed analysis of a more general type of $π$-junctions coined "phase winding" junctions where the phase of the order parameter rotates by an angle $π$ while its absolute value is kept finite. Such junctions hav…
We study the effect that resistive regions have on the conductance of a quantum wire with interacting electrons which is connected to Fermi liquid leads. Using the bosonization formalism and a Rayleigh dissipation function to model the power dissipation, we use both scattering theory and Green's function techniques to derive the DC conductance. The resistive regions are generally found to lead to incoherent transport. For a single wire, we find that the resistance adds in series to the contact resistance of h/e^2 for spinless electrons, and the total resistance is independent of the Luttinger …
We study the spectrum of Andreev bound states and Josephson currents across a junction of $N$ superconducting wires which may have $s$- or $p$-wave pairing symmetries and develop a scattering matrix based formalism which allows us to address transport across such junctions. For $N \ge 3$, it is well known that Berry curvature terms contribute to the Josephson currents; we chart out situations where such terms can have relatively large effects. For a system of three $s$- or three $p$-wave superconductors, we provide analytic expressions for the Andreev bound state energies and study the Josephs…
Well-known conductive molecular wires, like cumulene or polyyne, provide a model for interconnecting molecular electronics circuit. In the recent experiment, the appearance of carbon wire bridging two-dimensional electrodes - graphene sheets - was observed [PRL 102, 205501 (2009)], thus demonstrating a mechanical way of producing the cumulene. In this work, we study the structure and conductance properties of the carbon wire suspended between carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of different chiralities (zigzag and armchair), and corresponding conductance variation upon stretching. We find the geometrical …
In this paper, we study the conductance and shot noise in transport through a multi-site system in a two terminal configuration. The dependence of the transport on the number of atoms in the atomic wire is investigated using a tight-binding Hamiltonian and the nonequilibrium Green's function method. In addition to reproducing the even-odd behavior in the transmission probability at the Fermi energy or the linear response conductance in the normal-atomic wire-normal metallic(NAN) junctions, we find the following: (i) The shot noise is larger in the even-numbered atomic wire than in the odd-numb…
We study the Josephson effect for a topologically nontrivial superconducting (TS) wire with Majorana fermion end states and tunnel-coupled to s-wave BCS superconducting (S) electrodes. In an S-TS junction, no supercurrent flow is possible under fairly general conditions. For the S-TS-S junction, bulk TS quasiparticles must be accessible to have a Josephson effect. In the noninteracting case, we derive the exact current-phase relation (CPR) and find π-periodic behavior with negative critical current for weak tunnel couplings. Charging effects then cause the anomalous CPR $I(φ)=I_c \cosφ$, where…
We investigate transport properties of a superconducting junction of many ($N \ge 2$) one-dimensional quantum wires. We include the effectofelectron-electron interaction within the one-dimensional quantum wire using a weak interaction renormalization group procedure. Due to the proximity effect, transport across the junction occurs via direct tunneling as well as via the crossed Andreev channel. We find that the fixed point structure of this system is far more rich than the fixed point structure of a normal metal$-$superconductor junction ($N = 1$), where we only have two fixed points - the fu…
We have constructed a theory of dual canonical formalism, to study the quantum dual systems. In such a system, as the relationship between current and voltage of each, we assumed the duality conditions. As a simple example, we examined the duality between the SC / SI / SC junction and SI / SC / SI junction. We derived the relationship between the phase and the number of particles in a dual system of each other.
For spin-polarized junctions of ferromagnetically contacting multiple conductive paths, such as ferromagnet (FM)/atomic wires/FM and FM/carbon nanotubes/FM junctions, we theoretically investigate spin-dependent transport to elucidate the intrinsic relation between the number of paths and conduction, and to enhance the magnetoresistance (MR) ratio. When many paths are randomly located between the two FMs, electronic wave interference between the FMs appears, and then the MR ratio increases with increasing number of paths. Furthermore, at each number of paths, the MR ratio for carbon nanotubes b…
Computationally inexpensive approximations describing electron-phonon scattering in molecular-scale conductors are derived from the non-equilibrium Green's function method. The accuracy is demonstrated with a first principles calculation on an atomic gold wire. Quantitative agreement between the full non-equilibrium Green's function calculation and the newly derived expressions is obtained while simplifying the computational burden by several orders of magnitude. In addition, analytical models provide intuitive understanding of the conductance including non-equilibrium heating and provide a co…
We study time resolved transport properties of a $Y$-junction composed of interacting one-dimensional quantum wires using a bosonization approach. In particular, we investigate the AC conductivity of the $Y$-junction formed from finite length Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid wires based on a plasmon scattering approach for injected charge pulses of arbitrary shapes. In addition, we calculate the tunneling current and quantum noise of the $Y$-junction arising from point-like tunneling impurities at the junction, including finite temperature effects. Our results will be useful for designing nano-electr…
We study exact self duality in the model of a Brownian particle in a washboard (WB) potential which describes a Josephson Junction (JJ) coupled to an environment, for arbitrary temperature and arbitrary form of the spectral density of the environment. To this end we introduce the Quantum Dissipative Villain Model (QDVM), which models tunneling of a degree of freedom coupled to a linear quantum environment through an infinite set of states. We derive general exact mappings on various dual discrete representations (one-dimensional Coulomb gases or surface roughening models) which are exactly sel…
We calculate the tunneling density of states (TDOS) in a three wire junction of interacting spin-1/2 electrons, and find an anomalous enhancement of the TDOS in the zero bias limit, even for repulsive interactions for several bosonic fixed points. This enhancement is physically related to the reflection of holes from the junction for incident electrons, and it occurs only in the vicinity of the junction ($x < v_{\rm min}/2ω$ where $v_{\rm min}$ is the minimum of the velocity of charge or spin excitations and $ω$ is the bias frequency), crossing over to the bulk value which is always suppressed…
Understanding electron transport processes in molecular wires connected between contacts is a central focus in the field of molecular electronics. Especially, the dephasing effect causing tunneling-to-hopping transition has great importance from both applicational and fundamental points of view. We analyzed coherent and incoherent electron transmission through conjugated molecular wires by means of density-functional tight-binding theory within the D'Amato-Pastawski model. Our approach can study explicitly the structure/transport relationship in molecular junctions in a dephasing environmental…
We consider the problem of two capacitively coupled Josephson junction arrays made of ultrasmall junctions. Each one of the arrays can be in the semiclassical or quantum regimes, depending on their physical parameter values. The former case is dominated by a Cooper-pair superfluid while the quantum one is dominated by dynamic vortices leading to an insulating behavior. We first consider the limit when both arrays are in the semiclassical limit, and next the case when one array is quantum and the other semiclassical. We present WKB and Mean Field theory results for the critical temperature of e…
Recent experimental realization [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 127 (2005) 7328] of various dithiocarbamate self assembly on gold surface opens the possibility for use of dithiocarbamate linkers to anchor molecular wires to gold electrodes. In this paper, we explore this hypothesis computationally. We computed the electron transport properties of 4,4'-bipyridine (BP), 4,4'-bipyridinium-1,1'-bis(carbodithioate) (BPBC), 4-(4'-pyridyl)-peridium-1-carbodithioate (BPC) molecule junctions based on the density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green's functions. We demonstrated that the stronger molecule-ele…
We explore the thermoelectric properties of gold atomic chains bridging gold electrodes by means of \textit{ab initio} and semi-empirical calculations, and heuristic reasoning. We predict the thermoelectric voltage induced by a temperature difference across such junctions to oscillate, repeatedly changing sign, as a function of the number of atoms $N$ making up the atomic chain. We also predict the amplitude of the oscillations to be proportional to $N$ for long atomic chains. Further we predict the thermoelectric voltage to change sign, in some cases, if the junction is stretched without chan…
We study electron and spin transport in interacting quantum wires contacted by noninteracting leads. We theoretically model the wire and junctions as an inhomogeneous chain where the parameters at the junction change on the scale of the lattice spacing. We study such systems analytically in the appropriate limits based on Luttinger liquid theory and compare the results to quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the conductances and local densities near the junction. We first consider an inhomogeneous spinless fermion model with a nearest-neighbor interaction and then generalize our results to a sp…
A spin-orbit coupled quantum wire, with one end proximate to an s-wave superconductor, can become a topological superconductor, with a Majorana mode localized at each end of the superconducting region. It was recently shown that coupling one end of such a topological superconductor to $two$ normal channels of interacting electrons leads to a novel type of frustration and a quantum critical point when both channels couple with equal strength. We propose an experimental method to access this critical point in a $single$ quantum wire and show its resilience to disorder.
We study the zero-temperature transport properties of one-dimensional normal-superconductor (NS) junctions with topological superconductors across their topological transitions. Working within the Blonder-Tinkham-Klapwijk (BTK) formalism generalized for topological NS junctions, we analytically calculate the differential conductance for tunneling into two models of a topological superconductor: a spinless intrinsic $p$-wave superconductor and a spin-orbit-coupled $s$-wave superconductor in a Zeeman field. In both cases we verify that the zero-bias conductance is robustly quantized at $2e^2/h$ …
Low temperature transport measurements on superconducting film - normal metal wire - superconducting film (SNS) junctions fabricated on the basis of 6 nm thick superconducting polycrystalline PtSi films are reported. The structures with the normal metal wires of two different lengths L=1.5 $μ$m and L=6$μ$m and the same widths W=0.3$μ$m are studied. Zero bias resistance dip related to pair current proximity effect is observed for all junctions whereas the subharmonic energy gap structure originating from phase coherent multiple Andreev reflections have occurs only in the SNS junctions with shor…
