Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 66: Superconductivity: Tunneling, Josephson Junctions, SQUIDs

TT 66.9: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 17:15–17:45, H 2053

Probing Andreev Bound States in One-Atom Superconducting Contacts — •Hugues Pothier, Camille Janvier, Leandro Tosi, Çağlar Girit, Marcelo Goffman, Daniel Esteve, and Cristiàn Urbina — Quantronics Group, SPEC, CEA-Saclay, France

Superconductors are characterized by a dissipationless current. Since the work of Josephson 50 years ago, it is known that a supercurrent can even flow through tunnel junctions between superconductors. This Josephson effect also occurs through any type of “weak links” between superconductors: non-superconducting materials, constrictions, ... A unified understanding of the Josephson effect has emerged from a mesoscopic description of weak links. It relies on the existence of doublets of localized states that have energies below the superconducting gap: the Andreev bound states. I will present experiments performed on the simplest conductor possible, a single-atom contact between superconductors, that illustrate these concepts. The most recent work demonstrates time-domain manipulation of quantum superpositions of Andreev bound states.