Andreev bound states in superconductor-barrier-superconductor junctions of Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl semimetals

Abstract

We consider a superconductor-barrier-superconductor configuration built with Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl semimetal, which features four bands crossing at a single nodal point. Assuming a homogeneous s-wave pairing in each superconducting region, and the barrier region created by applying a voltage of magnitude $V_0 $ across a piece of normal state semimetal, we apply the BdG formalism to compute the discrete energy spectrum $\varepsilon $ of the subgap Andreev bound states in the short-barrier regime. In contrast with the two-band semimetals studied earlier, we find upto four pairs of localized states (rather than one pair for two-band semimetals) in the thin-barrier limit, and each value of $\varepsilon $ has a complicated dependence on the phase difference $\varphi_{12} $ via cosine and sine functions, which cannot be determined analytically. These are artifacts of multi-band nodes hosting quasiparticles of pseudospin values greater than $1/2$. Using the bound state energies, we compute the Josephson current across the junction configuration.