Electron transport in p-wave superconductor-normal metal junctions

Abstract

We study low temperature electron transport in p-wave superconductor-insulator-normal metal junctions. In diffusive metals the p-wave component of the order parameter decays exponentially at distances larger than the mean free path $l$. At the superconductor-normal metal boundary, due to spin-orbit interaction, there is a triplet to singlet conversion of the superconducting order parameter. The singlet component survives at distances much larger than $l$ from the boundary. It is this component that controls the low temperature resistance of the junctions. As a result, the resistance of the system strongly depends on the angle between the insulating boundary and the $\mathbf{d}$-vector characterizing the spin structure of the triplet superconducting order parameter. We also analyze the spatial dependence of the electric potential in the presence of the current, and show that the electric field is suppressed in the insulating boundary as well as in the normal metal at distances of order of the coherence length away from the boundary. This is very different from the case of the normal metal-insulator-normal metal junctions, where the voltage drop takes place predominantly at the insulator.

10 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (7)

• High Resolution Polar Kerr Effect Measurements of Sr2RuO4: Evidence for Broken Time Reversal Symmetry in the Superconducting State
• Evaluation of Spin-Triplet Superconductivity in Sr2RuO4
• Chiral P-Wave Order in Sr_2RuO_4
• Hidden quasi one-dimensional superconductivity in Sr${}_2$RuO${}_4$
• Theory of quantum metal to superconductor transitions in highly conducting systems
• Magnetic Intragap States and Mixed Parity Pairing at the Edge of Spin-Triplet Superconductors
• d-wave to s-wave to normal metal transitions in disordered superconductors

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Anomalous Transport Phenomena in $p_x+i{p}_y$ Superconductors
• Effects of the phase coherence on the local density of states in superconducting proximity structures