Signatures of Topological Superconductivity and Josephson Diode Effects on the Magnetocurrent-Phase Relation of Planar Josephson Junctions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that magneto-current-phase relation measurements in planar Josephson junctions with Rashba spin-orbit coupling and magnetic fields can reveal their topological and microscopic properties, including phase transitions and the Josephson diode effect.

Contribution

The study introduces a comprehensive theoretical framework showing how magneto-CPR can diagnose topological phases, SOC strength, and junction characteristics in proximitized planar JJs.

Findings

Magneto-CPR can reconstruct ground-state phases and detect 0-pi transitions.

Magnitudes of phase jumps quantify Rashba SOC.

Magneto-CPR enables topological phase diagram construction.

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of proximitized planar Josephson junctions (JJs) with Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) subject to an in-plane magnetic field and demonstrate that the magneto-current-phase relation (magneto-CPR) provides a powerful and unified probe of their microscopic and topological properties. By analyzing the full phase and Zeeman-field dependence of the supercurrent, we show that magneto-CPR measurements allow one to reconstruct the ground-state phase that minimizes the system's free energy in the absence of phase bias. This reconstructed phase generally displays 0-pi-like transitions as a function of the Zeeman energy, and we demonstrate that the magnitudes of the associated phase jumps provide quantitative information about the Rashba SOC. We further show that the mixed phase-field response encoded in the magneto-CPR enables the extraction of the second mixed spin susceptibility, which serves as a sensitive diagnostic of gap closings and can be used to construct a superconducting topological phase diagram in terms of the relative topological gap. In addition, the magneto-CPR yields the field dependence of the forward and reverse critical currents, allowing one to characterize the Josephson diode effect and its connection to the Zeeman field, Rashba SOC, and junction transparency. Our results establish magneto-CPR measurements as a versatile spectroscopic tool that can be used to extract key system parameters and provide evidence of topological superconducting phases in planar JJs.