2006/12/01 by A. Levy Yeyati, F. S. Bergeret, A. Martin-Rodero +2 · 7 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys621
published as Nature Phys. 3, 455 (2007) · 6 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2006/12/01 · openalex publication_date 2007/05/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Superconductors connected to normal metallic electrodes at the nanoscale provide a potential source of non-locally entangled electron pairs. Such states would arise from Cooper pairs splitting into two electrons with opposite spins tunnelling into different leads. In an actual system the detection of these processes is hindered by the elastic transmission of individual electrons between the leads, yielding an opposite contribution to the non-local conductance. Here we show that electromagnetic excitations on the superconductor can play an important role in altering the balance between these two processes, leading to a dominance of one upon the other depending on the spatial symmetry of these excitations. These findings allow to understand some intriguing recent experimental results and open the possibility to control non-local transport through a superconductor by an appropriate design of the experimental geometry.