Superconducting Photocurrent and Light Enriched Supercurrent Phase Relation

TL;DR

This paper explores how noncentrosymmetric superconductors exhibit light-induced photocurrents that alter their phase relation and inductance, enabling control over superconducting diode effects and providing new measurement tools.

Contribution

It demonstrates that superconducting photocurrents can modify the current phase relation and induce non-reciprocal effects, revealing new ways to probe quantum geometry in superconductors.

Findings

Photocurrents can change the superconducting phase relation.

Chiral light induces non-reciprocal inductance.

Light-controlled diode effects in superconductors.

Abstract

Noncentrosymmetric superconductors are expected to exhibit DC photocurrents even for irradiation frequencies below the superconducting gap. Such superconducting photocurrent are non-dissipative and track the quantum geometry of the superconducting state. Here we argue that superconducting photocurrent drives changes to the constitutive superconducting current phase relation (CPR) manifesting in a light controlled inductive response as well as altering the critical current. For chiral incident light, we find that superconducting photocurrent can transform reciprocal CPR into a non-reciprocal CPR producing a non-reciprocal inductance and light-controlled superconducting diode effect. These provide a protocol for measuring superconducting photocurrent and new tools for mapping the quantum geometry and order parameter of superconductors.