Chiral nodes and oscillations in the Josephson current in Weyl semimetals

Abstract

The separation of the Weyl nodes in a broken time-reversal symmetric Weyl semimetal leads to helical quasi-particle excitations at the Weyl nodes, which, when coupled with overall spin conservation allows only inter-nodal transport at the junction of the Weyl semimetal with a superconductor. This leads to an unusual periodic oscillation in the Josephson current as a function of $k_0L$, where $L$ is the length of the Weyl semimetal and $2k_0$ is the inter-nodal distance. This oscillation is robust and should be experimentally measurable, providing a direct path to confirming the existence of chiral nodes in the Weyl semimetal.

4+1 Pages + Appendix, V2: Accepted version to be published on Phys. Rev. B (Rapid Comm)