Collective excitation-mediated transport in nanoscale Josephson junctions that exhibit quantum confinement
Abstract
Quantum confinement can strongly modify transport through Josephson junctions. Here, we study local tunneling transport through nanoscale Josephson junction stacks in the Coulomb blockade regime, where the metallic layers exhibit strong vertical quantum confinement. We find that quasiparticle transport is strongly enhanced by a collective excitation mode intrinsic to the junction and localized in the isolated metallic overlayer. We quantify both the collective-mode energy and the Coulomb gap and show that both exhibit strong layer-dependent modulation, consistent with the modulation of the underlying quantum well states. We further investigate how the collective excitation responds to various perturbations, including mechanical motion and an applied magnetic field. Our results suggest that this collective mode is sensitive to quasiparticles near the Fermi level and may therefore provide an indirect probe of the superconducting state.
Related
- Closed-form hard-sphere thermodynamics under nanoscale confinement: from equations of state to unmixing forces
- Nanoscale magnetometry via collective many-body dynamics in diamond
- Confinement Geometry Regulates Fluctuations, Densities, and Collective Escape in Interacting Active Matter
- Collective early-time spontaneous decay of a cold atomic ensemble from the single to multiple excitation regime
- Leggett--Garg Tests of Collective Excitation--Inhibition Dynamics in Neuronal Circuits
BibTeX
@misc{liu2026collective,
title = {{Collective excitation-mediated transport in nanoscale Josephson junctions that exhibit quantum confinement}},
author = {Zhengyuan Liu and Sebastian Scherb and Werner M. J. van Weerdenburg and Daniel Wegner and Nadine Hauptmann and Alexander A. Khajetoorians},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21725},
eprint = {2609.21725},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21725},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Collective excitation-mediated transport in nanoscale Josephson junctions that exhibit quantum confinement
AU - Zhengyuan Liu
AU - Sebastian Scherb
AU - Werner M. J. van Weerdenburg
AU - Daniel Wegner
AU - Nadine Hauptmann
AU - Alexander A. Khajetoorians
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21725
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21725
AB - Quantum confinement can strongly modify transport through Josephson junctions. Here, we study local tunneling transport through nanoscale Josephson junction stacks in the Coulomb blockade regime, where the metallic layers exhibit strong vertical quantum confinement. We find that quasiparticle transport is strongly enhanced by a collective excitation mode intrinsic to the junction and localized in the isolated metallic overlayer. We quantify both the collective-mode energy and the Coulomb gap and show that both exhibit strong layer-dependent modulation, consistent with the modulation of the underlying quantum well states. We further investigate how the collective excitation responds to various perturbations, including mechanical motion and an applied magnetic field. Our results suggest that this collective mode is sensitive to quasiparticles near the Fermi level and may therefore provide an indirect probe of the superconducting state.
ER -