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

Abstract

©2015 American Physical Society Hybrid semiconductor-superconductor systems are interesting melting pots where various fundamental effects in condensed-matter physics coexist. For example, when a quantum dot is coupled to a superconducting electrode two very distinct phenomena, superconductivity and the Kondo effect, compete. As a result of this competition, the system undergoes a quantum phase transition when the superconducting gap ¿ is of the order of the Kondo temperature TK. The underlying physics behind such transition ultimately relies on the physics of the Anderson model where the standard metallic host is replaced by a superconducting one, namely the physics of a (quantum) magnetic impurity in a superconductor. A characteristic feature of this hybrid system is the emergence of subgap bound states, the so-called Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states, which cross zero energy across the quantum phase transition, signaling a switching of the fermion parity and spin (doublet or singlet) of the ground state. Interestingly, similar hybrid devices based on semiconducting nanowires with spin-orbit coupling may host exotic zero-energy bound states with Majorana character. Both parity crossings and Majorana bound states (MBSs) are experimentally marked by zero-bias anomalies in transport, which are detected by coupling the hybrid device with an extra normal contact. We here demonstrate theoretically that this extra contact, usually considered as a nonperturbing tunneling weak probe, leads to nontrivial effects. This conclusion is supported by numerical renormalization-group calculations of the phase diagram of an Anderson impurity coupled to both superconducting and normal-state leads. We obtain this phase diagram for an arbitrary ratio ¿TK, which allows us to analyze relevant experimental scenarios, such as parity crossings as well as Kondo features induced by the normal lead, as this ratio changes. Spectral functions at finite temperatures and magnetic fields, which can be directly linked to experimental tunneling transport characteristics, show zero-energy anomalies irrespective of whether the system is in the doublet or singlet regime. We also derive the analytical condition for the occurrence of Zeeman-induced fermion-parity switches in the presence of interactions which bears unexpected similarities with the condition for emergent MBSs in nanowires.