Non-universal suppression of the excitation gap in chaotic Andreev billiards: Superconducting terminals as sensitive probes for scarred states

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that scarred states in chaotic Andreev billiards can significantly suppress the excitation gap over a broad energy window, making them detectable over larger ranges than previously possible with normal terminals.

Contribution

It reveals how long-lived scarred states affect the excitation gap in chaotic Andreev billiards, showing a non-universal suppression mechanism distinct from random-matrix theory predictions.

Findings

Scarred states suppress the excitation gap over a broad energy window.

The suppression can be much larger than the scar's resonance width.

Scarred states enable detection over a wider energy range than normal terminals.

Abstract

When a quantum-chaotic normal conductor is coupled to a superconductor, random-matrix theory predicts that a gap opens up in the excitation spectrum which is of universal size $E_g^{\rm RMT}\approx 0.3 \hbar/t_D$, where $t_D$ is the mean scattering time between Andreev reflections. We show that a scarred state of long lifetime $t_S\gg t_D$ suppresses the excitation gap over a window $\Delta E\approx 2 E_g^{\rm RMT}$ which can be much larger than the narrow resonance width $\Gamma_S=\hbar/t_S$ of the scar in the normal system. The minimal value of the excitation gap within this window is given by $\Gamma_S/2\ll E_g^{\rm RMT}$. Hence the scarred state can be detected over a much larger energy range than it is the case when the superconducting terminal is replaced by a normal one.