Josephson junctions of topological nodal superconductors

Ranjani Seshadri*, Maxim Khodas, Dganit Meidan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offer a unique platform to study unconventional superconductivity, owing to the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling and a remarkable stability to an in-plane magnetic field. A recent study found that when an in-plane field applied to a superconducting monolayer TMD is increased beyond the Pauli critical limit, a quantum phase transition occurs into a topological nodal superconducting phase which hosts Majorana flat bands. We study the current-phase relation of this nodal superconductor in a Josephson junction geometry. We find that the nodal superconductivity is associated with an energy-phase relation that depends on the momentum transverse to the current direction, with a 4π periodicity in between pairs of nodal points. We interpret this response as a result of a series of quantum phase transitions, driven by the transverse momentum, which separate a trivial phase and two distinct topologically non-trivial phases characterized by different winding invariants. This analysis sheds light on the stability of the Majorana flat bands to symmetry-breaking perturbations.

Original languageEnglish
Article number197
JournalSciPost Physics
Volume12
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright R. Seshadri et al. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Published by the SciPost Foundation.

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