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Thermal conductance and nonequilibrium superconductivity in a diffusive NSN wire probed by shot noise
We investigate diffusive nanowire-based structures with two normal terminals on the sides and a central
superconducting island in the middle, which is either grounded or floating. Using a semiclassical calculation
we demonstrate that both device layouts permit a quantitative measurement of the energy dependent subgap
thermal conductance Gth from the spectral density of the current noise. In the floating case this goal is achieved
without the need to contact the superconductor provided the device is asymmetric, which may be attractive from
the experimental point of view. In addition, we observe that the shot noise in the floating case is sensitive to a
well-known effect of nonequilibrium suppression and bistability of the superconducting gap. Our calculations are
directly applicable to the multimode case and can serve as a starting point to understand the shot noise response
in an open one-dimensional Majorana device.