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Tensor Monopoles in superconducting systems

Topology in general but also topological objects such as monopoles are a central concept in physics. They are prime examples for the intriguing physics of gauge theories and topological states of matter. Vector monopoles are already frequently discussed such as the well-established Dirac monopole in three dimensions. Less known are tensor monopoles giving rise to tensor gauge fields. Here we report that tensor monopoles can potentially be realized in superconducting multi-terminal systems using…

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Universal Properties of Mesoscopic Fluctuations of the Secondary "Smile" Gap

The energy levels of a quasi-continuous spectrum in mesoscopic systems fluctuate in positions, and the distribution of the fluctuations reveals information about the microscopic nature of the structure under consideration. Here, we investigate mesoscopic fluctuations of the secondary "smile" gap, that appears in the quasiclassical spectrum of a chaotic cavity coupled to one or more superconductors. Utilizing a random matrix model, we compute numerically the energies of Andreev levels and access…

Geometrical Rabi oscillations and Landau-Zener transitions in non-Abelian systems

Topological phases of matter became a new standard to classify quantum systems in many cases, yet key quantities like the quantum geometric tensor providing local information about topological properties are still experimentally hard to access. In non-Abelian systems this accessibility to geometric properties can be even more restrictive due to the degeneracy of the states. We propose universal protocols to determine quantum geometric properties in non-Abelian systems. First, we show that for a…

Theory of quantum entanglement and the structure of two-mode squeezed antiferromagnetic magnon vacuum

Recent investigations of the quantum properties of an antiferromagnet in the spin wave approximation have identified the eigenstates as two-mode squeezed sublattice states. The uniform squeezed vacuum and one-magnon states were shown to display a massive sublattice entanglement. Here we expand this investigation and study the squeezing properties of all sublattice Fock states throughout the magnetic Brillouin zone. We derive the full statistics of the sublattice magnon number with wave…

Controlling charge and spin transport in an Ising-superconductor Josephson junction

An in-plane magnetic field applied to an Ising superconductor converts spin-singlet Cooper pairs to spin-triplet ones. In this work, we study a Josephson junction formed by two Ising superconductors that are proximitized by ferromagnetic layers. This leads to highly tunable spin-triplet pairing correlations which allow to modulate the charge and spin supercurrents through the in-plane magnetic exchange fields. For a junction with a nonmagnetic barrier, the charge current is switchable by…

Spin-dependent tunneling between individual superconducting bound states

Magnetic impurities on superconductors induce discrete bound levels inside the superconducting gap, known as Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states. YSR levels are fully spin polarized such that the tunneling between YSR states depends on their relative spin orientation. Here, we use scanning tunneling spectroscopy to resolve the spin dynamics in the tunneling process between two YSR states by experimentally extracting the angle between the spins. To this end, we exploit the ratio of thermally activated…

Exponential speedup of incoherent tunneling via dissipation

We study the escape rate of a particle in a metastable potential in the presence of a dissipative bath coupled to the momentum of the particle. Using the semiclassical bounce technique, we find that this rate is exponentially enhanced. In particular, the influence of momentum dissipation depends on the slope of the barrier that the particle is tunneling through. We investigate also the influence of dissipative baths coupled to the position, and to the momentum of the particle, respectively. In…

Persistent Response in an Ultrastrongly Driven Mechanical Membrane Resonator

We study experimentally and theoretically the phenomenon of “persistent response” in ultrastrongly driven membrane resonators. The term persistent response denotes the development of a vibrating state with nearly constant amplitude over an extreme wide frequency range. We reveal the underlying mechanism by directly imaging the vibrational state using advanced optical interferometry. We argue that this state is related to the nonlinear interaction between higher-order flexural modes and…

Geometrical Rabi oscillations and Landau-Zener transitions in non-Abelian systems

Topological phases of matter became a new standard to classify quantum systems in many cases, yet key quantities like the quantum geometric tensor providing local information about topological properties are still experimentally hard to access. In non-Abelian systems this accessibility to geometric properties can be even more restrictive due to the degeneracy of the states. We propose universal protocols to determine quantum geometric properties in non-Abelian systems. First, we show that for a…

Tunneling processes between Yu-Shiba-Rusinov bound states

Very recent experiments have reported the tunneling between Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) bound states at the atomic scale. These experiments have been realized with the help of a scanning tunneling microscope where a superconducting tip is functionalized with a magnetic impurity and is used to probe another magnetic impurity deposited on a superconducting substrate. In this way it has become possible to study for the first time the spin-dependent transport between individual superconducting bound…