Josephson Effect between Conventional and Rashba Superconductors

Abstract

We study the Josephson effect between a conventional s-wave superconductor and a non-centrosymmetric superconductor with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Rashba spin-orbit coupling affects the Josephson pair tunneling in a characteristic way. The Josephson coupling can be decomposed into two parts, a `spin-singlet-like' and a `spin-triplet-like' component. The latter component can lead to shift of the Josephson phase by πrelative to the former coupling. This has important implications on interference effects and may explain some recent experimental results for the Al/CePt3Si junction.

8 pages, no figure; reference updated