Phase-dependent transport in thermally-driven superconducting single-electron transistors

TL;DR

This paper explores how temperature differences drive heat and charge transport in a superconducting single-electron transistor, revealing phase-dependent thermoelectric effects influenced by Coulomb interactions and virtual tunneling.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework that accounts for strong interactions and nonequilibrium conditions, highlighting phase-dependent thermoelectric phenomena in superconducting transistors.

Findings

Finite heat and charge currents occur near particle-hole symmetry due to temperature bias.

Phase difference influences charge currents even with symmetric temperature bias.

Level renormalization from virtual tunneling causes thermoelectric effects.

Abstract

We investigate thermally-driven transport of heat and charge in a superconducting single-electron transistor by means of a real-time diagrammatic transport theory. Our theoretical approach allows us to account for strong Coulomb interactions and arbitrary nonequilibrium conditions while performing a systematic expansion in the tunnel coupling. We find that a temperature bias across the system gives rise to finite heat and charge currents close to the particle-hole symmetric point which depend both on the gate voltage as well as on the phase difference between the superconducting reservoirs. The finite thermoelectric effect arises due to level renormalization from virtual tunneling processes. Furthermore, we find that the phase bias can give rise to finite charge currents even in the presence of an inversion-symmetric temperature bias.