Published February 7, 2024 | Version v1
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Tomasch Oscillations as Above-Gap Signature of Topological Superconductivity

  • 1. TCM Group, Cavendish Laboratory, J. J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom
  • 2. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  • 3. School of Microelectronics and Physics, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha, Hunan Province 410205, China
  • 4. Department of Physics, University of Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany

Description

The identification of topological superconductors usually involves searching for in-gap modes that are protected by topology. However, in current experimental settings, the smoking-gun evidence of these in-gap modes is still lacking. In this Letter, we propose to support the distinction between two-dimensional conventional s-wave and topological p-wave superconductors by above-gap transport signatures. Our method utilizes the emergence of Tomasch oscillations of quasiparticles in a junction consisting of a superconductor sandwiched between two metallic leads. We demonstrate that the behavior of the oscillations in conductance as a function of the interface barriers provides a distinctive signature for s-wave and p-wave superconductors. Specifically, the oscillations become weaker as the barrier strength increases in s-wave superconductors, while they become more pronounced in p-wave superconductors, which we prove to be a direct manifestation of the pairing symmetries. Our method can serve as a complimentary probe for identifying some classes of topological superconductors through the above-gap transport.

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10.1103_PhysRevLett.132.066301.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.066301;
arXiv
arXiv:2305.09530;
Crossref Funder ID
10.13039/501100001809; 10.13039/501100012166; 10.13039/501100001711; 10.13039/501100001659;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
Journal Volume
132
Journal Issue
6
Journal Page Range
7 pgs.
ISSN
0031-9007

Optional Information

Contract/Grant/Project number
12074172; 12222406; 12304064; 2022YFA120470; 2021YFA1400403; 199969; 449653034
Notes
These authors contributed equally to this work.; Contact Email: Corresponding author: pchenweis@gmail.com; Present address: Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.; Record automatically processed
Funding organization
National Natural Science Foundation of China; National Key Research and Development Program of China; Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft