TY  - JOUR
A1  - Oostinga, Jeroen B.
A1  - Maier, Luis
A1  - Schüffelgen, Peter
A1  - Knott, Daniel
A1  - Ames, Christopher
A1  - Brüne, Christoph
A1  - Tkachov, Grigory
A1  - Buhmann, Hartmut
A1  - Molenkamp, Laurens W.
T1  - Josephson Supercurrent through the Topological Surface States of Strained Bulk HgTe
JF  - Physical Review X
N2  - Strained bulk HgTe is a three-dimensional topological insulator, whose surface electrons have a high mobility (~ 30 000 cm\(^2\)=Vs), while its bulk is effectively free of mobile charge carriers. These properties enable a study of transport through its unconventional surface states without being hindered by a parallel bulk conductance. Here, we show transport experiments on HgTe-based Josephson junctions to investigate the appearance of the predicted Majorana states at the interface between a topological insulator and a superconductor. Interestingly, we observe a dissipationless supercurrent flow through the topological surface states of HgTe. The current-voltage characteristics are hysteretic at temperatures below 1 K, with critical supercurrents of several microamperes. Moreover, we observe a magnetic-field-induced Fraunhofer pattern of the critical supercurrent, indicating a dominant \(2\pi\)-periodic Josephson effect in the unconventional surface states. Our results show that strained bulk HgTe is a promising material system to get a better understanding of the Josephson effect in topological surface states, and to search for the manifestation of zero-energy Majorana states in transport experiments.
KW  - topological insulators
KW  - mesoscopics
KW  - superconductivity
Y1  - 2013
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-129834
VL  - 3
IS  - 021007
ER  -