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We theoretically investigate the propagation of heat currents in a three-terminal quantum dot engine. Electron–electron interactions introduce state-dependent processes which can be resolved by energy-dependent tunneling rates. We identify the relevant transitions which define the operation of the system as a thermal transistor or a thermal diode. In the former case, thermal-induced charge fluctuations in the gate dot modify the thermal currents in the conductor with suppressed heat injection, resulting in huge amplification factors and the possible gating with arbitrarily low energy cost. In the latter case, enhanced correlations of the state-selective tunneling transitions redistribute heat flows giving high rectification coefficients and the unexpected cooling of one conductor terminal by heating the other one. We propose quantum dot arrays as a possible way to achieve the extreme tunneling asymmetries required for the different operations.
The Josephson effect describes the generic appearance of a supercurrent in a weak link between two superconductors. Its exact physical nature deeply influences the properties of the supercurrent. In recent years, considerable efforts have focused on the coupling of superconductors to the surface states of a three-dimensional topological insulator. In such a material, an unconventional induced p-wave superconductivity should occur, with a doublet of topologically protected gapless Andreev bound states, whose energies vary 4π-periodically with the superconducting phase difference across the junction. In this article, we report the observation of an anomalous response to rf irradiation in a Josephson junction made of a HgTe weak link. The response is understood as due to a 4π-periodic contribution to the supercurrent, and its amplitude is compatible with the expected contribution of a gapless Andreev doublet. Our work opens the way to more elaborate experiments to investigate the induced superconductivity in a three-dimensional insulator.
Frequency analysis of the rf emission of oscillating Josephson supercurrent is a powerful passive way of probing properties of topological Josephson junctions. In particular, measurements of the Josephson emission enable the detection of topological gapless Andreev bound states that give rise to emission at half the Josephson frequency f\(_{J}\) rather than conventional emission at f\(_{J}\). Here, we report direct measurement of rf emission spectra on Josephson junctions made of HgTe-based gate-tunable topological weak links. The emission spectra exhibit a clear signal at half the Josephson frequency f\(_{J}\)/2. The linewidths of emission lines indicate a coherence time of 0.3–4 ns for the f\(_{J}\)/2 line, much shorter than for the f\(_{J}\) line (3–4 ns). These observations strongly point towards the presence of topological gapless Andreev bound states and pave the way for a future HgTe-based platform for topological quantum computation.