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Register a new userRobustness of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition in Ultrathin NbN Films near the Superconductor-Insulator Transition
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Occurrence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is investigated by superfluid density measurements for two-dimensional (2D) disordered NbN films with disorder level very close to a superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). Our data show a robust BKT transition even near this 2D disorder-tuned quantum critical point (QCP). This observation is in direct contrast with previous data on deeply underdoped quasi-2D cuprates near the SIT. As our NbN films approach the QCP, the vortex-core energy, an important energy scale in the BKT transition, scales with the superconducting gap, not with the superfluid density, as expected within the standard 2D-XY model description of BKT physics.
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The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is expected to have a clear signature on the specific heat. The singularity at the transition temperature $T_{BKT}$ is predicted to be immeasurable, and a broad non-universal peak is expected at $T>T_{BKT}$. Up to date this has not been observed in two-dimensional superconductors. We use a unique highly sensitive technique to measure the specific heat of ultrathin Pb films. We find that thick films exhibit a specific heat jump at $T_C$ that is consistent with BCS theory. As the film thickness is reduced below the superconducting coherence length and the systems enters the 2D limit the specific heat reveals BKT-like behavior. We discuss these observations in the framework of the continuous BCS-BKT crossover as a function of film thickness.
The effect of an electric field on the conductance of ultrathin films of metals deposited on substrates coated with a thin layer of amorphous Ge was investigated. A contribution to the conductance modulation symmetric with respect to the polarity of the applied electric field was found in regimes in which there was no sign of glassy behavior. For films with thicknesses that put them on the insulating side of the superconductor-insulator transition, the conductance increased with electric field, whereas for films that were becoming superconducting it decreased. Application of magnetic fields to the latter, which reduce the transition temperature and ultimately quench superconductivity, changed the sign of the reponse of the conductance to electric field back to that found for insulators. We propose that this symmetric response to capacitive charging is a consequence of changes in the conductance of the a-Ge layer, and is not a fundamental property of the physics of the superconductor-insulator transition as previously suggested.
The precondition for the BKT transition in thin superconducting films, the logarithmic intervortex interaction, is satisfied at distances short relative to $Lambda=2lambda^2/d$, $lambda$ is the London penetration depth of the bulk material and $d$ is the film thickness. For this reason, the search for the transition has been conducted in samples of the size $L<Lambda$. It is argued below that film edges turn the interaction into near exponential (short-range) thus making the BKT transition impossible. If however the substrate is superconducting and separated from the film by an insulated layer, the logarithmic intervortex interaction is recovered and the BKT transition should be observable.
Superconducting hybrid junctions are revealing a variety of novel effects. Some of them are due to the special layout of these devices, which often use a coplanar configuration with relatively large barrier channels and the possibility of hosting Pearl vortices. A Josephson junction with a quasi ideal two-dimensional barrier has been realized by growing graphene on SiC with Al electrodes. Chemical Vapor Deposition offers centimeter size monolayer areas where it is possible to realize a comparative analysis of different devices with nominally the same barrier. In samples with a graphene gap below 400 nm, we have found evidence of Josephson coherence in presence of an incipient Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. When the magnetic field is cycled, a remarkable hysteretic collapse and revival of the Josephson supercurrent occurs. Similar hysteresis are found in granular systems and are usually justified within the Bean Critical State model (CSM). We show that the CSM, with appropriate account for the low dimensional geometry, can partly explain the odd features measured in these junctions.
We test an improved finite-size scaling method for reliably extracting the critical temperature $T_{rm BKT}$ of a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. Using known single-parameter logarithmic corrections to the spin stiffness $rho_s$ at $T_{rm BKT}$ in combination with the Kosterlitz-Nelson relation between the transition temperature and the stiffness, $rho_s(T_{rm BKT})=2T_{rm BKT}/pi$, we define a size dependent transition temperature $T_{rm BKT}(L_1,L_2)$ based on a pair of system sizes $L_1,L_2$, e.g., $L_2=2L_1$. We use Monte Carlo data for the standard two-dimensional classical XY model to demonstrate that this quantity is well behaved and can be reliably extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit using the next expected logarithmic correction beyond the ones included in defining $T_{rm BKT}(L_1,L_2)$. For the Monte Carlo calculations we use GPU (graphical processing unit) computing to obtain high-precision data for $L$ up to 512. We find that the sub-leading logarithmic corrections have significant effects on the extrapolation. Our result $T_{rm BKT}=0.8935(1)$ is several error bars above the previously best estimates of the transition temperature; $T_{rm BKT} approx 0.8929$. If only the leading log-correction is used, the result is, however, consistent with the lower value, suggesting that previous works have underestimated $T_{rm BKT}$ because of neglect of sub-leading logarithms. Our method is easy to implement in practice and should be applicable to generic BKT transitions.
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