TITLE:
Formation of Interface Bound States on a Graphene-Superconductor Junction in the Presence of Charge Inhomogeneities
AUTHORS:
Pablo Burset, William Javier Herrera, Alfredo Levy Yeyati
KEYWORDS:
Graphene; Superconducting Hybrid Structures; Andreev Reflection
JOURNAL NAME:
Graphene,
Vol.2 No.1,
January
24,
2013
ABSTRACT: Interface bound states have been theoretically predicted to appear at isolated graphene-superconductor junctions. These states are formed at the interface due to the interplay between virtual Andreev and normal reflections and provide long range superconducting correlations on the graphene layer. We describe in detail the formation of these states from combining the Dirac equation with the Bogoliubov de Gennes equations of superconductivity. On the other hand, fluctuations of the low energy charge density in graphene have been confirmed as the dominating type of disorder. For analyzing the effect of disorder on these states we use a microscopic tight binding model. We show how the formation of these states is robust against the presence of disorder in the form of electron charge inhomogeneities in the graphene layer. We numerically compute the effect of disorder on the interface bound states and on the local density of states of graphene.