Paper detail

DC Josephson effect in superconductor-quantum dot-superconductor junctions

A quantum dot weakly coupled to two normal metal leads exhibits resonant transmission when one of the dot energy levels lies within the applied bias window. But when the quantum dot is sidecoupled to the transport channel, transmission in the channel is suppressed when a dot energy lies in the bias window. A steady current can also be driven in a transport channel by connecting it to superconducting reservoirs and applying a Josephson phase difference instead of a voltage bias. An interesting question is to investigate the transport across quantum dot connected to two superconductors maintained at a superconducting phase difference. To incorporate the geometry where quantum dot is sidecoupled, we consider a quantum dot with two sites connected to the superconductors in two geometrical configurations: (A) the one where both the sites are in the transport channel and (B) the other where only one site is in the transport channel and the second site sidecoupled. We find that both the configurations show resonant transmission for Josephson current and give qualitatively same result when the onsite energies of the two sites in the dot are equal. The two configurations exhibit distinct Josephson current characteristics when the onsite energies of the two sites are equal in magnitude and opposite in sign. We understand the obtained results. The systems studied are within the reach of current experiments.