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Introducing an in-plane magnetic field into Josephson junctions is of fundamental significance in exploring a variety of interesting physical phenomena. However, extra care must be paid in realistic experiments involving an in-plane magnetic field, because trivial orbital effect due to, e.g., rippled structures can inevitably be introduced, which could produce false effect confusing the expected physical phenomena. In this work, we report a diamond-shaped evolution of the critical supercurrent in an in-plane magnetic field in NbTiN weak-link Josephson junctions. Upon application of an in-plane magnetic field perpendicular to the current, the superconducting interference pattern exhibits a characteristic evolution, which manifests as a diamond block diagram featured with each node opened and stretched out in a V-shape, mimicking the suppression-recovery patterns of critical supercurrent related to the Zeeman-driven 0-pi transition. However, the effect of Zeeman splitting plays a negligible role due to the relatively small magnetic field involved in our experiment. Therefore, we explore the trivial orbital effect of rippled structures and further take into account non-uniform current distributions pertaining in our junctions. We find that the ripples in combination with specific current distributions can give rise to a similar evolution pattern as the experimental observations. Our results serve as a caution that the combined effect of rippled structures and non-homogeneous current distributions should be taken seriously for experiments subjected by in-plane magnetic fields., Comment: 15pages,13 figures

Topological materials with boundary (surface/edge/hinge) states have attracted tremendous research interest. Besides, unconventional (obstructed atomic) materials have recently drawn lots of attention owing to their obstructed boundary states. Experimentally, Josephson junctions (JJs) constructed on materials with boundary states produce the peculiar boundary supercurrent, which was utilized as a powerful diagnostic approach. Here, we report the observations of conspicuous hinge supercurrent in NiTe$_2$-based JJs. Particularly, applying an in-plane magnetic field along the Josephson current could rapidly suppress the bulk supercurrent and retain the nearly pure hinge supercurrent, namely the magnetic field filtering of supercurrent. Further systematic comparative analysis and theoretical calculations demonstrate the existence of unconventional nature and obstructed hinge states in NiTe$_2$. Our results revealed the unique hinge states in unconventional metal NiTe$_2$, and demonstrated in-plane magnetic field as an efficient method to filter out the futile bulk contributions and thereby to highlight the hinge states hidden in topological/unconventional materials., Comment: 20+6 pages,6+5 figures

Quantum magneto-oscillations have long been a vital subject in condensed matter physics, with ubiquitous quantum phenomena and diverse underlying physical mechanisms. Here, we demonstrate the intrinsic and reproducible DC-current-driven quantum electro-oscillations with a periodicity in the inverse of the current (1/I), in quasi-one-dimensional charge-density-wave (CDW) insulators (TaSe$_4$)$_2$I and TaS$_3$ nanowires. Such oscillations manifest in the nearly infinite Fr\"ohlich conductivity region where the undamped CDW flow forms in a finite electric current, and finally disappear after the oscillation index n reaches 1. A systematic investigation on the effect of temperature and magnetic field establishes that the observed electro-oscillations are a coherent quantum phenomenon. We discuss the possibilities of the physical mechanisms, including the formation of sliding-driven inherent Floquet sidebands. Our results introduce a new member in the family of quantum oscillations, and shed light on plausible avenues to explore novel physics and potential applications of coherent density-wave condensates., Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures