Universal conductance fluctuations in mesoscopic systems with superconducting leads: Beyond the Andreev approximation

Abstract

We report our investigation of the sample to sample fluctuation in transport properties of phase coherent normal-metal-superconductor hybrid systems. Extensive numerical simulations were carried out for quasi-one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems in both square lattice (Fermi electron) as well as honeycomb lattice (Dirac electron). Our results show that when the Fermi energy is within the superconducting energy gap Δ, the Andreev conductance fluctuation exhibits a universal value (UCF) which is approximately two times larger than that in the normal systems. According to the random matrix theory, the electron-hole degeneracy (ehD) in the Andreev reflections (ARs) plays an important role in classifying UCF. Our results confirm this. We found that in the diffusive regime there are two UCF plateaus, one corresponds to the complete electron-hole symmetry (with ehD) class and the other to conventional electron-hole conversion (ehD broken). In addition, we have studied the Andreev conductance distribution and found that for the fixed average conductance G the Andreev conductance distribution is a universal function that depends only on the ehD. In the localized regime, our results show that ehD continues to serve as an indicator for different universal classes. Finally, if normal transport is present, i.e., Fermi energy is beyond energy gap Δ, the AR is suppressed drastically in the localized regime by the disorder and the ehD becomes irrelevant. As a result, the conductance distribution is the same as that of normal systems. © 2010 The American Physical Society.