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arXiv · 2205.04469

The Josephson diode effect in supercurrent interferometers

Rubén Seoane Souto·Martin Leijnse·Constantin Schrade
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Abstract

A Josephson diode is a non-reciprocal circuit element that supports a larger dissipationless supercurrent in one direction than in the other. In this work, we propose and theoretically study a class of Josephson diodes based on supercurrent interferometers containing mesoscopic Josephson junctions, such as point contacts or quantum dots, which are not diodes themselves but possess non-sinusoidal current-phase relations. We show that such Josephson diodes have several important advantages, like being electrically tunable and requiring neither Zeeman splitting nor spin-orbit coupling, only time-reversal breaking by a magnetic flux. We also show that our diodes have a characteristic AC response, revealed by the Shapiro steps. Even the simplest realization of our Josephson diode paradigm that relies on only two junctions can achieve efficiencies of up to $\sim40\%$ and, interestingly, far greater efficiencies are achievable by concatenating multiple interferometer loops.

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Rubén Seoane Souto, Martin Leijnse, Constantin Schrade. 2022-05-09. The Josephson diode effect in supercurrent interferometers. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.129.267702

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