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arXiv:0907.5161 · Physical Review B

Interference of Cooper pairs emitted from independent superconductors

Mauro Iazzi, Kazuya Yuasa

Published May 4, 2010• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We discuss the interference in the two-particle distribution of the electrons emitted from two independent superconductors. It is clarified that, while the interference appearing in the antibunching correlation is due to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, that in the positive correlation due to superconductivity is intrinsically different and is nothing but the first-order interference of Cooper pairs emitted from different sources. This is the equivalent of the interference of two independent Bose-Einstein condensates.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.81.172501

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We discuss the interference in the two-particle distribution of the electrons emitted from two independent superconductors. It is clarified that, while the interference appearing in the antibunching correlation is due to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, that in the positive correlation due to superconductivity is intrinsically different and is nothing but the first-order interference of Cooper pairs emitted from different sources. This is the equivalent of the interference of two independent Bose-Einstein condensates.
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Abstract We investigate two-electron interference in free space using two laser-triggered needle tips as independent electron sources, a fermionic realisation of the landmark Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer. We calculate the two-electron interference pattern in a quantum path formalism taking into account the fermionic nature and the spin configuration of the electrons. We also estimate the Coulomb repulsion in the setup in a semiclassical approach. We find that antibunching resulting from Pauli’s exclusion principle and repulsion stemming from the Coulomb interaction can be clearly distinguished.
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