Control of Josephson current by Aharonov-Casher Phase in a Rashba Ring

Abstract

We study the interference effect induced by the Aharonov-Casher phase on the Josephson current through a semiconducting ring attached to superconducting leads. Using a 1D model that incorporates spin-orbit coupling in the semiconducting ring, we calculate the Andreev levels analytically and numerically, and predict oscillations of the Josephson current due to the AC phase. This result is valid from the point contact limit to the long channel length limit, as defined by the ratio of the junction length and the BCS healing length. We show in the long channel length limit that the impurity scattering has no effect on the oscillation of the Josephson current, in contrast to the case of conductivity oscillations in a spin-orbit coupled ring system attached to normal leads where impurity scattering reduces the amplitude of oscillations. Our results suggest a new scheme to measure the AC phase with, in principle, higher sensitivity. In addition, this effect allows for control of the Josephson current through the gate voltage tuned AC phase.

12pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Tunable Supercurrent Through Semiconductor Nanowires
• Modulating Unpolarized Current in Quantum Spintronics: Visibility of Spin-Interference Effects in Multichannel Aharonov-Casher Mesoscopic Rings
• Josephson current through a quantum dot with spin-orbit coupling
• Splitting of Andreev levels in a Josephson junction by spin-orbit coupling
• Aharonov-Casher and spin Hall effects in two-dimensional mesoscopic ring structures with strong spin-orbit interaction
• Strong Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in GaAs two-dimensional holes
• Spin-orbital coupling effect on Josephson current through a superconductor heterojunction
• Quantum Rings with Rashba spin orbit coupling: a path integral approach

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spin-polarized supercurrents for spintronics: a review of current progress
• Spin polarization in the Hubbard model with Rashba spin-orbit coupling on a ladder
• Aharonov-Bohm and Aharonov-Casher effects for local and nonlocal Cooper pairs
• Artificial topological insulator realized in a two-terminal Josephson junction with Rashba spin-orbit interaction