The Proximity Effect

Nanostructures and the proximity effect

Nanostructures have interesting properties due to the confinement of electrons in small structures. In addition, since an appreciable fraction of the electronic wave-function resides outside the physical extension of the nanostructure, proximity effects become more important with decreasing size. Moreover, in magnetic nanostructures the magnetic fields also extend a considerable distance outsid...

Bulk Topological Proximity Effect.

Existing proximity effects stem from systems with a local order parameter, such as a local magnetic moment or a local superconducting pairing amplitude. Here, we demonstrate that despite lacking a local order parameter, topological phases also may give rise to a proximity effect of a distinctively inverted nature. We focus on a general construction in which a topological phase is extensively co...

Proximity Effect Modeling

Spectral Features of the Proximity Effect

We calculate the local density of states (LDOS) of a superconductor-normal metal sandwich at arbitrary impurity concentration. The presence of the superconductor induces a gap in the normal metal spectrum that is proportional to the inverse of the elastic mean free path l for rather clean systems. For a mean free path much shorter than the thickness of the normal metal, we find a gap size propo...

Quantitative simulation of the superconducting proximity effect

A numerical method is developed to calculate the transition temperature of double or multilayers consisting of films of superconductors and normal conductors. The approach is based on a dynamic interpretation of Gorkov’s linear gap equation and is very flexible. The mean free path l of the different metals, transmission through the interface, ratio of specular reflection to diffusive scattering...