Specular Interband Andreev Reflections in Graphene

ORAL

Abstract

Electrons incident from a normal metal onto a superconductor are reflected back as holes -- a process called Andreev reflection. In a normal metal where the Fermi energy is much larger than a typical superconducting gap, the reflected hole retraces the path taken by the incident electron. In graphene with ultra- low disorder, however, the Fermi energy can be tuned to be smaller than the superconducting gap. In this unusual limit, the holes are expected to be reflected specularly at the superconductor-graphene interface due to the onset of interband Andreev processes, where the effective mass of the reflected holes change sign. Here we present measurements of gate modulated Andreev reflections across the low disorder van der Waals interface formed between graphene and the superconducting NbSe$_{2}$. We find that the conductance across the graphene/superconductor interface exhibits a characteristic suppression when the Fermi energy is tuned to values smaller than the superconducting gap, a hallmark for the transition between intraband retro and interband specular- Andreev reflections.

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Authors

  • Konstantin B. Efetov

    • Ruhr-Universität Bochum; National University of Science and Technology "MISiS", Moscow
    • Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum

  • Dmitri Efetov

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Lei Wang

    • Cornell University
    • Columbia University

  • Gil-Ho Lee

    • Harvard University

  • Jia Shuang

    • Princeton University

  • Robert Cava

    • Department of Chemistry, Princeton University
    • Princeton University
    • Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton NJ

  • Takashi Taniguchi

    • NIMS, Japan
    • National Institute for Materials Science
    • National Institute for Materials Science, Namiki 1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
    • NIMS Japan
    • National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
    • NIMS

  • Kenji Watanabe

    • National Institute of Materials Science
    • NIMS Japan

  • James Hone

    • Columbia Universtiy in the City of New York
    • Columbia University
    • Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
    • columbia univerisity

  • Cory Dean

    • Columbia University
    • Department of Physics, Columbia University

  • Philip Kim

    • Harvard University, Department of Physics
    • Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
    • Harvard University, Physics Department
    • Harvard University