Artificial topological insulator realized in a two-terminal Josephson junction with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We study a two-terminal Josephson junction with conventional superconductors and a normal region with Rashba spin-orbit interaction, characterized by two Aharonov-Casher (AC) fluxes. When the superconducting phase difference equals $\pi$, the Andreev subgap spectrum may host zero-energy Weyl singularities associated with a vanishing normal-state reflection eigenvalue. With one of the AC fluxes playing the role of a quasimomentum, the junction can be viewed as an artificial one-dimensional chiral topological insulator. Its topological phase can be tuned by crossing a Weyl singularity by means of varying the remaining AC flux. By associating an additional component of the quasimomentum with the superconducting phase difference, an artificial Chern insulator is realized.