Nonadiabatic charge pumping across two superconductors connected through a normal metal region by periodically driven potentials

Abstract

Periodically driven systems exhibit resonance when the difference between an excited state energy and the ground state energy is an integer multiple of $\hslash$ times the driving frequency. On the other hand, when a superconducting phase difference is maintained between two superconductors, subgap states appear which carry a Josephson current. A driven Josephson junction therefore opens up an interesting avenue where the excitations due to applied driving affect the current flowing from one superconductor to the other. Motivated by this, we study charge transport in a superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) junction where oscillating potentials are applied to the normal metal region. We find that for small amplitudes of the oscillating potential, driving at one site reverses the direction of current at the superconducting phase differences when difference between the subgap eigenenergies of the undriven Hamiltonian is integer multiple of $\hslash$ times the driving frequency. For larger amplitudes of oscillating potential, driving at one site exhibits richer features. We show that even when the two superconductors are maintained at same superconducting phase, a current can be driven by applying oscillating potentials to two sites in the normal metal differing by a phase. We find that when there is a nonzero Josephson current in the undriven system, the local peaks and valleys in current of the system driven with an amplitude of oscillating potential smaller than the superconducting gap indicates sharp excitations in the system. In the adiabatic limit, we find that charge transferred in one time period diverges as a powerlaw with pumping frequency when a Josephson current flows in the undriven system. Our calculations are exact and can be applied to finite systems. We discuss possible experimental setups where our predictions can be tested.

9 pages, 9 figures

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• Bipolar supercurrent in graphene
• Equilibrium states of generic quantum systems subject to periodic driving
• Pumping in a mesoscopic ring with Ahronov-Casher effect
• Nonadiabatic charge pumping in a one-dimensional system of noninteracting electrons by an oscillating potential
• Adiabatic pumping in a Superconductor-Normal-Superconductor weak link
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Anomalous Josephson current through a driven double quantum dot
• Nonequilibrium Josephson diode effect in periodically driven SNS junctions
• Anomalous Josephson effect and rectification in junctions between Floquet topological superconductors
• Josephson diode effect in junctions of superconductors with band asymmetric metals
• Four-terminal Josephson junctions: diode effects, anomalous currents and transverse currents