Edelstein effect induced superconducting diode effect in inversion symmetry breaking MoTe$_2$ Josephson junctions

Abstract: Superconducting diode effect (SDE) with nonreciprocal supercurrent transport has attracted intense attention recently, not only for its intriguing physics, but also for its great application potential in superconducting circuits. It is revealed in this work that planar Josephson junctions (JJs) based on type-II Weyl semimetal (WSM) MoTe$_2$ can exhibit a prominent SDE due to the emergence of asymmetric Josephson effect (AJE) in perpendicular magnetic fields. The AJE manifests itself in a very large asymmetry in the critical supercurrents with respect to the current direction. The sign of this asymmetry can also be effectively modulated by the external magnetic field. Considering the special noncentrosymmetric crystal symmetry of MoTe$_2$, this AJE is understood in terms of the Edelstein effect, which induces a nontrivial phase shift in the current phase relation of the junctions. Besides these, it is further demonstrated that the rectification of supercurrent in such MoTe$_2$ JJs with the rectification efficiency up to 50.4%, unveiling the great application potential of WSMs in superconducting electronics.