Superconductornormal
Superconductornormal is a term used in discussions of heterostructures that combine superconducting and normal-state materials. It refers to the interface and mutual influence between a superconductor and a normal metal or semiconductor, and to the phenomena that arise when the two regions are in contact. Central to superconductornormal physics is the superconducting proximity effect, whereby Cooper-pair correlations extend into the normal region, inducing a nonzero pair amplitude and, in some cases, a mini-gap that decays with distance from the interface. The characteristic length scale is the coherence length in the normal metal, which depends on temperature and material purity.
A key process at superconductornormal interfaces is Andreev reflection: an electron from the normal metal with
Theoretical descriptions of superconductornormal systems commonly use the Bogoliubov–de Gennes formalism for clean interfaces or the
Experimentally, S-N hybrids are used to study quantum transport, proximity-induced superconductivity, and Andreev spectroscopy. They underpin