Time-local nonequilibrium Green's function method for real-time dynamics in quantum systems coupled to superconducting leads

Abstract

We develop a time-local nonequilibrium Green's function formulation for real-time dynamics in quantum systems coupled to superconducting leads. The superconducting lead self-energy is a strongly frequency-dependent matrix in Nambu space, giving rise to nonlocal memory kernels in the time domain. This makes direct propagation of the Kadanoff-Baym (KB) equations computationally demanding. To overcome this difficulty, we extend the auxiliary-mode expansion, originally developed for normal-metal leads, to Nambu-space self-energies. This allows us to decompose the superconducting lead self-energy into a finite number of exponential modes and to transform the KB equations with memory integrals into a closed set of ordinary differential equations. The resulting time-local equations enable efficient real-time simulations under general time-dependent bias voltages, superconducting phases, and one-body Hamiltonians of the central system, while retaining the memory effects induced by superconducting leads. As an application, we analyze voltage-quench dynamics in a superconductor-quantum-dot-superconductor junction and show that, after a dc bias is suddenly applied, the system evolves through a transient regime and relaxes to an ac Josephson periodic steady state. The resulting periodic steady-state current agrees with the Floquet Green's function solution, validating the present real-time formulation.