2020/03/01 by Yufan Li, Li, Yufan, Xiaoying Xu +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2003.00603
openalex publication_date 2020/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In superconductors, the condensation of Cooper pairs gives rise to fluxoid quantization in discrete units of Φ0 = hc / 2e. The denominator of 2e is the signature of electron pairing, which is evidenced by a number of macroscopic quantum phenomena, such as the Little-Parks effect and the Josephson effect, where the critical temperature or the critical current oscillates in the period of Φ0. Here we report the observation of fractional Little-Parks effect in mesoscopic rings of epitaxial β-Bi2Pd, a topological superconductor. Besides Φ0, novel Little-Parks oscillation periodicities of 2Φ0, 3Φ0 and 4Φ0 are also observed, implying quasiparticles with effective charges being a fraction of a Cooper pair. We show that the fractional Little-Parks effect may be closely related to the fractional Josephson effect, which is a key signature of chiral Majorana edge states.