Hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowires have emerged as a cornerstone in modern quantum devices. Integrating such nanowires into hybrid devices typically requires extensive postgrowth processing which may affect device performance unfavorably. Here, we present a technique for in situ shadowing superconductors on nanowires and compare the structural and electronic properties of Al junctions formed by shadowing versus etching.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFControlled coupling between distant particles is a key requirement for the implementation of quantum information technologies. A promising platform are hybrid systems of semiconducting quantum dots coupled to superconducting islands, where the tunability of the dots is combined with the macroscopic coherence of the islands to produce states with non-local correlations, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe characterize in situ grown parallel nanowires bridged by a superconducting island. The magnetic-field and temperature dependence of Coulomb blockade peaks measured across different pairs of nanowire ends suggest the presence of a subgap state extended over the hybrid parallel-nanowire island. Being gate-tunable, accessible by multiple terminals, and free of quasiparticle poisoning, these nanowires show promise for the implementation of several proposals that rely on parallel nanowire platforms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCooper pairing and Coulomb repulsion are antagonists, producing distinct energy gaps in superconductors and Mott insulators. When a superconductor exchanges unpaired electrons with a quantum dot, its gap is populated by a pair of electron-hole symmetric Yu-Shiba-Rusinov excitations between doublet and singlet many-body states. The fate of these excitations in the presence of a strong Coulomb repulsion in the superconductor is unknown, but of importance in applications such as topological superconducting qubits and multi-channel impurity models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle-Parks oscillations of a hollow superconducting cylinder are of interest for flux-driven topological superconductivity in single Rashba nanowires. The oscillations are typically symmetric in the orientation of the applied magnetic flux. Using double InAs nanowires coated by an epitaxial superconducting Al shell which, despite the non-centro-symmetric geometry, behaves effectively as one hollow cylinder, we demonstrate that a small misalignment of the applied parallel field with respect to the axis of the nanowires can produce field-asymmetric Little-Parks oscillations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSemiconductor-superconductor hybrids are widely used to realize complex quantum phenomena, such as topological superconductivity and spins coupled to Cooper pairs. Accessing new, exotic regimes at high magnetic fields and increasing operating temperatures beyond the state-of-the-art requires new, epitaxially matched semiconductor-superconductor materials. One challenge is the generation of favourable conditions for heterostructural formation between materials with the desired properties.
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