Nonreciprocal transport refers to charge transfer processes that are sensitive to the bias polarity. Until recently, nonreciprocal transport was studied only in dissipative systems, where the nonreciprocal quantity is the resistance. Recent experiments have, however, demonstrated nonreciprocal supercurrent leading to the observation of a supercurrent diode effect in Rashba superconductors. Here we report on a supercurrent diode effect in NbSe₂ constrictions obtained by patterning NbSe₂ flakes with both even and odd layer number. The observed rectification is a consequence of the valley-Zeeman spin-orbit interaction. We demonstrate a rectification efficiency as large as 60%, considerably larger than the efficiency of devices based on Rashba superconductors. In agreement with recent theory for superconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, we show that the effect is driven by the out-of-plane component of the magnetic field. Remarkably, we find that the effect becomes field-asymmetric in the presence of an additional in-plane field component transverse to the current direction. Supercurrent diodes offer a further degree of freedom in designing superconducting quantum electronics with the high degree of integrability offered by van der Waals materials.

Simultaneous breaking of inversion- and time-reversal symmetry in Josephson junction (JJ) leads to a possible violation of theI(φ) = −I(−φ) equality for the current–phase relation. This is known as anomalous Josephson effect and it produces a phase shiftφ₀in sinusoidal current–phase relations. In ballistic JJs with non-sinusoidal current phase relation the observed phenomenology is much richer, including the supercurrent diode effect and the magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA) of Josephson inductance. In this work, we present measurements of both effects on arrays of JJs defined on epitaxial Al/InAs heterostructures. We show that the orientation of the current with respect to the lattice affects the MCA, possibly as the result of a finite Dresselhaus component. In addition, we show that the two-fold symmetry of the Josephson inductance reflects in the activation energy for phase slips.

Tunneling spectroscopy of a Nb coupled carbon nanotube quantum dot reveals the formation of pairs of Andreev bound states (ABS) within the superconducting gap. A weak replica of the lower ABS is found, which is generated by quasiparticle tunneling from the ABS to the Al tunnel probe. An inversion of the ABS dispersion is observed at elevated temperatures, which signals the thermal occupation of the upper ABS. Our experimental findings are well supported by model calculations based on the superconducting Anderson model.

Understanding the interplay between many-body phenomena and nonequilibrium in systems with entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom is a central objective in nanoelectronics. We demonstrate that the combination of Coulomb interaction, spin-orbit coupling, and valley mixing results in a particular selection of the inelastic virtual processes contributing to the Kondo resonance in carbon nanotubes at low temperatures. This effect is dictated by conjugation properties of the underlying carbon nanotube spectrum at zero and finite magnetic field. Our measurements on a clean carbon nanotube are complemented by calculations based on a field-theoretical Keldysh approach to the nonequilibrium Kondo problem which well reproduces the rich experimental observations in Kondo transport.