Supercurrent rectification with time-reversal symmetry broken multiband superconductors

Abstract

Multiband superconductors with nontrivial interband phase relation between the order parameters can break time-reversal symmetry. The authors show here that a nonreciprocal supercurrent can arise in Josephson junctions linking conventional single-band and multiband superconductors with broken time-reversal symmetry, and the supercurrent rectification can be manipulated by the interband phase difference and the strength of the interband scattering. For a junction with three-band superconductors, the interband phase frustration leads to a hexagonal pattern of nodal lines in the profile of the rectification, where the amplitude drops to zero.