Abstract
Understanding electronic noise in hybrid junctions is essential for designing efficient nanoscale electronics at the quantum limit. Recently, a new (previously overlooked) noise contribution, generated by the temperature difference across a conducting heterostructure and denoted as delta-T noise, was predicted and revealed experimentally in atomic-scale contacts (Shein Lambroso et al. in Nature 562:240–244, 2018). While the new type of electronic noise and the well-known voltage-generated shot noise have the same partition origin, they are activated by different stimuli. In the paper by Shein Lambroso et al. (2018), transmission probabilities for electrons flowing through the considered setups were assumed to be constant, a very good approximation for normal metal contacts within the used temperature range. In this work, we propose and study theoretically the delta-T noise in hybrid normal metal–superconductor nanojunctions where it has to be more pronounced at low temperatures due to the strongly nonlinear energy dependence of interface scattering characteristics in the gap region. Such experiments can be useful to probe quantum effects and to reveal small temperature variations along electronic nanoscale circuits.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anantram MP, Datta S (1996) Current fluctuations in mesoscopic systems with Andreev scattering. Phys Rev B 53:16390–16402
Averin D, Bardas A (1995) ac Josephson effect in a single quantum channel. Phys Rev Lett 75:1831–1834
Beenakker C, Schönenberger C (2003) Phys Today 56:37–42
Belogolovskii M (2015) Proximity effect. In: Seidel P (ed) Applied superconductivity. Handbook on devices and applications, vol 1. Wiley-VCH, New York, pp 49–65
Belogolovskii M, Zhitlukhina E, Egorov O (2016) Low-energy spectra of differential conductivity and shot noise in tunnel junctions based on superconductors with suppression of the order parameter at the S–N interface. Low Temp Phys 42:1063–1066
Blanter YM, Büttiker M (2000) Phys Rep 336:1–166
Blonder GE, Tinkham M, Klapwijk TM (1982) Transition from metallic to tunneling regimes in superconducting microconstrictions: Excess current, charge imbalance, and supercurrent conversion. Phys Rev B 25:4515–4532
de Jong MIM, Beenakker CWJ (1994) Doubled shot noise in disordered normal-metal–superconductor junctions. Phys Rev Lett 49:16070–16073
Landauer R (1961) Irreversibility and heat generation in the computational process. IBM J Res Dev 5:261–269
Li M, Chen G (2019) Thermal transport for probing quantum materials. arXiv:1711.05833 [nlin.CD] (preprint)
Paolucci F, Marchegiani G, Strambini E, Giazotto F (2018) Phase-tunable thermal logic: computation with heat. Phys Rev Appl 10:024003–1–024003-10
Rothfuss D, Reiser A, Fleischmann A, Enss C (2016) Noise thermometry at ultra-low temperatures. Philos Trans R Soc A 374:20150051–1–20150051-7
Scheer E, Belzig W (2018) Unexpected noise from hot electrons Nature 562:200–201
Schurig T, Beyer J (2015) SQUID thermometers. In: Seidel P (ed) Applied superconductivity. Handbook on devices and applications, vol 2. Wiley-VCH, New York, pp 1066–1080
Shein Lumbroso O, Simine L, Nitzan A, Segal D, Tal O (2018) Nature 562:240–244
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the joint German-Ukrainian project “Controllable quantum-information transfer in superconducting networks” (DFG project number SE 664/21).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zhitlukhina, E., Belogolovskii, M. & Seidel, P. Electronic noise generated by a temperature gradient across a hybrid normal metal–superconductor nanojunction . Appl Nanosci 10, 5121–5124 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-020-01329-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-020-01329-7