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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Observation of supercurrent in single InAs self-assembled quantum dots coupled to superconducting leads

Yasushi Kanai, Russell Deacon, Kenta Yoshida, Kenji Shibata, Kazuhiko Hirakawa, A. Oiwa, Seigo Tarucha

Published Feb 1, 2009• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report a first direct observation of proximity supercurrent in a single InAs self-assembled quantum dot coupled to superconducting electrodes. We utilize large SAQDs with strong dot-lead coupling allowing sufficient overlap of quantized state that charge fluctuation in the dot may exceed one electron. Although the charging energy is larger than the superconductivity gap, Δ, the voltage characteristic measured in the current-driven four-terminal geometry signifies a supercurrent flow though the dot. The observed critical current is of the order of 10 pA, and much smaller than expected from theory. This current also shows the parity effect with the number of electrons in the dot, suggesting that the singlet correlation impedes the Cooper pair tunneling.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/150/2/022032

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We report a first direct observation of proximity supercurrent in a single InAs self-assembled quantum dot coupled to superconducting electrodes. We utilize large SAQDs with strong dot-lead coupling allowing sufficient overlap of quantized state that charge fluctuation in the dot may exceed one electron. Although the charging energy is larger than the superconductivity gap, Δ, the voltage characteristic measured in the current-driven four-terminal geometry signifies a supercurrent flow though the dot. The observed critical current is of the order of 10 pA, and much smaller than expected from theory. This current also shows the parity effect with the number of electrons in the dot, suggesting that the singlet correlation impedes the Cooper pair tunneling.
We study supercurrent in a single InAs self-assembled quantum dot contacted with superconducting leads and demonstrate that for regions where energy level spacing and charging energy are smaller than tunnel coupling, the supercurrent may be controlled by the degree of overlaps between energy levels, which is tunable using a side-gate electrode. In such regions, we find strong correlation between the supercurrent and the normal state conductance when the device parameters are tuned. In a Kondo regime with low Kondo temperature, we find that the scaling of the supercurrent and normal state conductance varies when the side-gate voltage is changed.
We report the transport measurements on the InAs self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs) which have a unique structural zero-dimensionality, coupled to a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). Owing to the SQUID geometry, we directly observe a π phase shift in the current phase relation and the negative supercurrent indicating π junction behavior by not only tuning the energy level of SAQD by back-gate but also controlling the coupling between SAQD and electrodes by side-gate. Our results inspire the future quantum information devices which can link optical, spin, and superconducting state.
The authors have fabricated superconductor-quantum dot-superconductor (SC-QD-SC) junctions by using SC aluminum electrodes with narrow gaps laterally contacting a single self-assembled InAs QD. The fabricated junctions exhibited clear Coulomb staircases and Coulomb oscillations at 40mK. Furthermore, clear suppression in conductance was observed for the source-drain voltage, ∣VSD∣<2Δ∕e, where Δ is the SC energy gap of Al. The absence of Josephson current that flows through QDs is due to the strong Coulomb interaction and non-negligible thermal fluctuation in our measurement system.
Serial double quantum dots created in semiconductor nanostructures provide a versatile platform for investigating two-electron spin quantum states, which can be tuned by electrostatic gating and an external magnetic field. In this Rapid Communication, we directly measure the supercurrent reversal between adjacent charge states of an InAs nanowire double quantum dot with superconducting leads, in good agreement with theoretical models. In the even charge parity sector, we observe a supercurrent blockade with increasing magnetic field, corresponding to the spin singlet to triplet transition. Our results demonstrate a direct spin to supercurrent conversion, the superconducting equivalent of the Pauli spin blockade. This effect can be exploited in hybrid quantum architectures coupling the quantum states of spin systems and superconducting circuits.
We study the critical Josephson current flowing through a double quantum dot weakly coupled to two superconducting leads. We use analytical as well as numerical methods to investigate this setup in the limit of small and large bandwidth leads in all possible charging states, where we account for on-site interactions exactly. Our results provide clear signatures of nonlocal spin-entangled pairs, which support interpretations of recent experiments [R. S. Deacon, A. Oiwa, J. Sailer, S. Baba, Y. Kanai, K. Shibata, K. Hirakawa, and S. Tarucha, Nat. Commun. 6, 7446 (2015)]. In addition, we find that the ground state with one electron on each quantum dot can undergo a tunable singlet-triplet phase transition in the regime where the superconducting gap in the leads is not too large, which gives rise to an additional new signature of nonlocal Cooper-pair transport.