Sebas Bergeret

Abstract:

Much attention is being paid to the study of superconducting systems whose transport properties depend on the direction of the supercurrents. Non-reciprocal transport effects have been proposed and observed in various structures motivated by creating a perfect superconducting diode. These are systems in which the critical superconducting current depends on the direction of the applied current. Besides possible applications, the physics of non-reciprocal effects is very rich. In particular in those systems in which superconductivity coexists with spin-dependent fields. In this talk, I will discuss the superconducting diode effect and its connection with other closely related phenomena. These include the anomalous current and $\phi$-Josephson junctions, the helical phase of Rashba superconductors, and magnetoelectric effects induced by the spin-orbit coupling.