No Arabic abstract
It is shown that in a structure consisting of a superconducting ring-shaped electrode overlapped by a normal metal contact through a thin oxide barrier, measurements of the tunnel current in magnetic field can probe persistent currents in the ring. The effect manifests itself as periodic oscillations of the tunnel current through the junction at a fixed bias voltage as function of perpendicular magnetic field. The magnitude of oscillations depends on bias point. It reaches maximum at energy eV which is close to the superconducting gap and decreases with increase of temperature. The period of oscillations dF in units of magnetic flux is equal neither to h/e nor to h/2e, but significantly exceeds these values for larger loop circumferences. The phenomenon is explained by formation of metastable states with large vorticity. The pairing potential and the superconducting density of states are periodically modulated by the persistent currents at sub-critical values resulting in corresponding variations of the measured tunnel current.
Low temperature properties of glasses are derived within a generalized tunneling model, considering the motion of charged particles on a closed path in a double-well potential. The presence of a magnetic induction field B violates the time reversal invariance due to the Aharonov-Bohm phase, and leads to flux periodic energy levels. At low temperature, this effect is shown to be strongly enhanced by dipole-dipole and elastic interactions between tunneling systems and becomes measurable. Thus, the recently observed strong sensitivity of the electric permittivity to weak magnetic fields can be explained. In addition, superimposed oscillations as a function of the magnetic field are predicted.
We calculate the contribution of superconducting fluctuations to the mesoscopic persistent current of an ensemble of rings, each made of a superconducting layer in contact with a normal one, in the Cooper limit. The superconducting transition temperature of the bilayer decays very quickly with the increase of the relative width of the normal layer. In contrast, when the Thouless energy is larger than the temperature then the suppression of the persistent current with the increase of this relative width is much slower than that of the transition temperature. This effect is similar to that predicted for magnetic impurities, although the proximity effect considered here results in pair-weakening as opposed to pair-breaking.
We study theoretically the contribution of fluctuating Cooper pairs to the persistent current in superconducting rings threaded by a magnetic flux. For sufficiently small rings, in which the coherence length $xi$ exceeds the radius $R$, mean field theory predicts a full reduction of the transition temperature to zero near half-integer flux. We find that nevertheless a very large current is expected to persist in the ring as a consequence of Cooper pair fluctuations that do not condense. For larger rings with $Rgg xi$ we calculate analytically the susceptibility in the critical region of strong fluctuations and show that it reflects competition of two interacting complex order parameters.
We perform the scanning tunneling spectroscopy based superconductor-vacuum-superconductor analogue to the seminal McMillan and Rowell superconductor-insulator-superconductor device study of phonons in the archetypal elemental superconductor Pb [W. L. McMillan and J. M. Rowell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 14, 108 (1965)]. We invert this spectroscopic data utilizing strong-coupling Eliashberg theory to obtain a local {alpha}^2F({omega}) and find broad underlying agreement with the pioneering results, highlighted by previously unobserved electron-hole asymmetries and new fine structure which we discuss in terms of both conventional and unconventional superconducting bosonics.
We present extensive Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STM/S) measurements at low temperatures in the multiband superconductor MgB$_2$. We find a similar behavior in single crystalline samples and in single grains, which clearly shows the partial superconducting density of states of both the $pi$ and $sigma$ bands of this material. The superconducting gaps corresponding to both bands are not single valued. Instead, we find a distribution of superconducting gaps centered around 1.9mV and 7.5mV, corresponding respectively to each set of bands. Interband scattering effects, leading to a single gap structure at 4mV and a smaller critical temperature can be observed in some locations on the surface. S-S junctions formed by pieces of MgB$_2$ attached to the tip clearly show the subharmonic gap structure associated with this type of junctions. We discuss future developments and possible new effects associated with the multiband nature of superconductivity in this compound.