Josephson effect between conventional and Rashba superconductors

Abstract We study the Josephson effect between a conventional s-wave superconductor and a non-centrosymmetric superconductor with Rashba spin–orbit coupling. Rashba spin–orbit coupling affects the Josephson pair tunneling in a characteristic way. The Josephson coupling can be decomposed into two parts, a ‘spin-singlet-like’ and a ‘spin-triplet-like’ component. The latter component can lead to a shift of the Josephson phase by π relative to the former coupling. This has important implications on interference effects and may explain some recent experimental results for the Al/CePt 3 Si junction.