Recently Baselmans et al. [Nature, 397, 43 (1999)] showed that the direction
of the supercurrent in a superconductor/normal/superconductor Josephson
junction can be reversed by applying, perpendicularly to the supercurrent, a
sufficiently large control current between two normal reservoirs. The novel
behavior of their 4-terminal device (called a controllable PI-junction) arises
from the nonequilibrium electron energy distribution established in the normal
wire between the two superconductors. We have observed a similar supercurrent
reversal in a 3-terminal device, where the control current passes from a single
normal reservoir into the two superconductors. We show theoretically that this
behavior, although intuitively less obvious, arises from the same
nonequilibrium physics present in the 4-terminal device. Moreover, we argue
that the amplitude of the PI-state critical current should be at least as large
in the 3-terminal device as in a comparable 4-terminal device.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Physical Review B Rapid
Communication