Josephson current and proximity effect in Luttinger liquids
- Department of Physics and Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Materials Research Laboratory, and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6 (CANADA)
A theory describing a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid in contact with a superconductor is developed. Boundary conditions for the fermion fields describing Andreev reflection at the contacts are derived and used to construct a bosonic representation of the fermions. The Josephson current through a superconductor/Luttinger liquid/superconductor junction is considered for both perfectly and poorly transmitting interfaces. In the former case, the Josephson current at low temperatures is found to be essentially unaffected by electron-electron interactions. In the latter case, significant renormalization of the Josephson current occurs. The profile of the (induced) condensate wave function in a semi-infinite Luttinger liquid in contact with a superconductor is shown to decay as a power law, the exponent depending on the sign and strength of the interactions. In the case of repulsive (attractive) interactions the decay is faster (slower) than in their absence. An equivalent method of calculating the Josephson current through a Luttinger liquid, which employs the bosonization of the system as a whole (i.e., superconductor, as well as Luttinger liquid) is developed and shown to give the results equivalent to those obtained via boundary conditions describing Andreev reflection. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society.}
- OSTI ID:
- 278531
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review, B: Condensed Matter, Vol. 53, Issue 3; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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