Gruppo di Fisica Statistica

This lecture series deals with thermo-electric transport in hybrid Superconductor (S) – Normal metal (N) tunnel junctions. Transport of charge and heat in such junctions is achieved by two types of reflection processes: normal reflection of single particles and Andreev reflection involving the transfer of two electrons from N forming a Cooper pair in S. The Andreev reflection process is strongly sensitive to mesoscopic phase-coherence, and we will discuss some of the implications of this fact.