Shiba states and zero-bias anomalies in the hybrid normal-superconductor Anderson model

Abstract

We determine the phase diagram of an Anderson impurity in contact with superconducting and normal-state leads for arbitrary ratio of the gap $Δ$ to the Kondo temperature $T_K$. We observe a considerable effect of even very weak coupling to the normal lead that is usually considered as a non-perturbing tunneling probe. The numerical renormalization group results are analyzed in the context of relevant experimental scenarios such as parity crossing (doublet-singlet) quantum phase transitions induced by a gap reduction as well as novel Kondo features induced by the normal lead. We point out the important role of finite temperatures and magnetic fields. Overall, we find a very rich behavior of spectral functions with zero-bias anomalies which can emerge irrespective of whether the ground state is a doublet or a singlet. Our findings are pertinent to the tunnelling-spectroscopy experiments aiming at detecting Majorana modes in nanowires.

Final version, 18 pages, 17 figures