Sub-Sharvin conductance and Josephson effect in graphene

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electrostatic potential profiles affect the Josephson effect and conductance in graphene-based superconductor junctions, revealing a transition from graphene-specific to ballistic behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical analysis of potential profile tuning in S-g-S graphene junctions, highlighting the evolution of conductance and critical current in different regimes.

Findings

In the unipolar regime, $I_cR_N$ approaches the ballistic value as potential profile is tuned.

Normal conductance increases from sub-Sharvin to Sharvin values with potential smoothing.

In the tripolar regime, conductance and critical current are suppressed, but $I_c R_N$ remains in the graphene-specific range.

Abstract

Titov and Beenakker [Phys. Rev. B 74, 041401(R) (2006)] found, by solving the Dirac-Bogoliubov-De-Gennes equation, that the product of critical current and normal-state resistance for superconductor-graphene-superconductor (S-g-S) Josephson junction takes values (for a short junction and zero temperature) between $I_cR_N\approx{}2.1$ and $I_cR_N\approx{}2.4$ in units of $e/\Delta_0$, where $\Delta_0$ is the superconducting gap. These values are notably higher than the tunnelling bound ($\pi/2$), but lower than the ballistic bound ($\pi$). Here we analyze numerically the tunneling of Cooper pairs through S-g-S junctions in which the longitudinal electrostatic potential profile is tuned, within gates electrodes, from a rectangular to a parabolic one. In the unipolar regime (i.e., when the chemical potential is above the top of a barrier, $\mu>0$), it is found that $I_cR_N$ gradually evolves from the graphene-specific to the ballistic value. At the same time, the normal-state conductance increases from the sub-Sharvin value of $1/R_N\approx(\pi/4)\,G_{\rm Sharvin}$ towards to the Sharvin value $G_{\rm Sharvin}=g_0|\mu|W/(\pi\hbar{}v_F)$, with the conductance quantum $g_0=4e^2/h$, the junction width $W$, and the Fermi velocity in graphene $v_F$. In contrast, in the tripolar regime ($\mu<0$), both normal-state conductance and the critical current are suppressed when smoothing the potential; however, $I_c{}R_N$ remains close to the graphene-specific range, even for a parabolic potential. The skewness of the current-phase relation is also discussed.