Proximity superconductivity in atom-by-atom crafted quantum dots

Abstract

Gapless materials in electronic contact with superconductors acquire proximity-induced superconductivity in a region near the interface. Numerous proposals build on this addition of electron pairing to originally non-superconducting systems like ferromagnets and predict intriguing quantum phases of matter, including topological-, odd-frequency-, or nodal-point superconductivity. However, atomic-scale experimental investigations of the microscopic mechanisms leading to proximity-induced Cooper pairing in surface or interface states are missing. Here, we investigate the most miniature example of the proximity effect on only a single quantum level of a surface state confined in a quantum corral on a superconducting substrate, built atom-by-atom by a scanning tunneling microscope. Whenever an eigenmode of the corral is pitched close to the Fermi energy by adjusting the corral's size, a pair of particle-hole symmetric states enters the superconductor's gap. We identify the in-gap states as scattering resonances theoretically predicted 50 years ago by Machida and Shibata, which had so far eluded detection. We further show that the observed anticrossings of the in-gap states indicate proximity-induced pairing in the quantum corral's eigenmodes. Our results have direct consequences on the interpretation of in-gap states in unconventional or topological superconductors, corroborate concepts to induce superconductivity into a single quantum level and further pave the way towards superconducting artificial lattices.

References in corpus (7)

• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Observation of a Majorana zero mode in a topologically protected edge channel
• On the preparation and electronic properties of clean superconducting Nb(110) surfaces
• Bogoliubov angle and visualization of particle-hole mixture in superconductors
• Interplay Between Yu-Shiba-Rusinov States and Multiple Andreev Reflections
• Superconductivity of lanthanum revisited: enhanced critical temperature in the clean limit
• Selective Trapping of Hexagonally Warped Topological Surface States in a Triangular Quantum Corral

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Majorana quasiparticles in atomic spin chains on superconductors
• Signatures of Kondo-Majorana interplay in ac response
• Floquet-engineered diode performance in a Majorana-quantum dot Josephson junction
• Control of Andreev Reflection via a Single-Molecule Orbital
• Spatially Dependent in-Gap States Induced by Andreev Tunneling through a Single Electronic State
• Quantum-size effect induced Andreev bound states in ultrathin metallic islands proximitized by a superconductor
• Scanning Tunneling Microscopy in high vectorial magnetic fields
• Time-reversal symmetric topological superconductivity in Machida-Shibata lattices