1997/09/30 by Andrea Huck, F. W. J. Hekking, B. Krämer +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/epl/i1998-00131-8
RevTeX, 4 pages, 4 eps figures, (tar,gzip,uuencode)
arxiv created 1997/09/30 · openalex publication_date 1998/01/15 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We study the subgap transport properties of a small-capacitance normal-metal–superconductor tunnel junction coupled to an external electromagnetic environment. Mesoscopic interference between the electrons in the normal metal strongly enhances the subgap conductance with decreasing bias voltage. On the other hand, quantum fluctuations of the environment destroy electronic phase coherence and suppress the subgap conductance at low bias (Coulomb blockade). The competition between charging effects and mesoscopic interference leads to a non-monotonic dependence of the differential subgap conductance on the applied bias voltage. This feature is pronounced, even if the coupling to the environment is weak and the charging energy is small.