No Arabic abstract
We report on magneto-optical imaging, magnetization, Hall effect and magneto-resistance experiments in Nb/Al_2O_3/Co thin film heterostructures. The magnetic field is applied perpendicularly to the plane of the film and gives rise to abrupt flux penetration of dendritic form. A magnetization texture is imprinted in the Co layer in perfect coincidence with these ramifications. The spin domains that mimic the vortex dendrites are stable upon the field removal. Moreover, the imprinted spin structure remains visible up to room temperature. Complementary magnetization, Hall effect and magneto-resistance experiments were performed in a similar sample where electrical contacts were placed on the Co layer. In the region of the field - temperature diagram where flux instabilities are known to occur in Nb films, irregular jumps are observed in the magnetic hysteresis and large amplitude noise is detected in the magneto-resistance and Hall resistivity data when measured as a function of the field.
We study vortex current distributions in narrow thin-film superconducting strips. If one defines the vortex core ``boundary as a curve where the current reaches the depairing value, intriguing features emerge. Our conclusions based on the London approach have only qualitative relevance since the approach breaks down near the core. Still, the main observation which might be useful is that the core size near the strip edges is smaller than in the rest of the strip. If so, the Bardeen-Stephen flux-flow resistivity should be reduced near the edges. Moreover, at elevated temperatures, when the depairing current is small, the vortex core may extend to the whole strip width, thus turning into an edge-to-edge phase-slip line.
The dynamics of magnetic field penetration into thin-walled superconducting niobium cylinders is experimentally investigated. It is shown that magnetic field penetrates through the wall of a cylinder in a series of giant jumps with amplitude 10 - 20 Oe and duration of a few $mu$s. The jumps take place when the total current in the wall, not the current density, exceeds some critical value. In addition there are small jumps and/or smooth penetration, and their contribution can reach 20% of the total penetrating flux. It is demonstrated that the magnetic field inside the cylinder exhibits several oscillations. The number of giant jumps reduces with temperature.
We describe progress and initial results achieved towards the goal of developing integrated multi-conductor arrays of shielded controlled-impedance flexible superconducting transmission lines with ultra-miniature cross sections and wide bandwidths (dc to >10 GHz) over meter-scale lengths. Intended primarily for use in future scaled-up quantum computing systems, such flexible thin-film Nb/polyimide ribbon cables provide a physically compact and ultra-low thermal conductance alternative to the rapidly increasing number of discrete coaxial cables that are currently used by quantum computing experimentalists to transmit signals between the low-temperature stages (from ~ 4 K down to ~ 20 mK) of a dilution refrigerator. S-parameters are presented for 2-metal layer Nb microstrip structures with lengths ranging up to 550 mm. Weakly coupled open-circuit microstrip resonators provided a sensitive measure of the overall transmission line loss as a function of frequency, temperature, and power. Two common polyimide dielectrics, one conventional and the other photo-definable (PI-2611 and HD-4100, respectively) were compared. Our most striking result, not previously reported to our knowledge, was that the dielectric loss tangents of both polyimides are remarkably low at deep cryogenic temperatures, typically 100$times$ smaller than corresponding room temperature values. This enables fairly long-distance transmission of microwave signals without excessive attenuation and permits usefully high rf power levels to be transmitted without creating excessive dielectric heating. We observed loss tangents as low as 2.2$times$10$^{-5}$ at 20 mK. Our fabrication techniques could be extended to more complex structures such as multiconductor, multi-layer stripline or rectangular coax, and integrated attenuators and thermalization structures.
We have studied the influence of a square array of pinning centers on the dynamics of vortex avalanches in Pb thin films by means of ac- and dc- magnetization measurements. Close to the superconducting transition Tc the commensurability between the vortex lattice and the pinning array leads to the well known local increments of the critical current. As temperature T decreases, matching features progressively fade out and eventually disappear. Further down in temperature vortex avalanches develop and dominate the magnetic response. These avalanches manifest themselves as jumps in the dc-magnetization and produce a lower ac-shielding giving rise to a paramagnetic reentrance in the ac-screening x(T). Within the flux jump regime two subregimes can be identified. Close to the boundary where vortex avalanches develope, the field separation between consecutive jumps follow the periodicity of the pinning array and a field and temperature dependent screening is observed. In this regime, the response also depends on frequency f in agreement with theoretical models for magnetothermal instabilities. At low enough temperatures and fields, the screening saturates to a constant value independent of T, H, and f, where jumps are randomly distributed. We have also found that vortex instabilities occupy a larger portion of the H-T diagram in patterned samples than in films without nanoengineered pinning sites. Finally, we discuss the possible origin of the vortex avalanches and compare our results with previous experimental and theoretical studies.
Flux penetrations into three-dimensional Nb superconducting strip arrays, where two layers of strip arrays are stacked by shifting a half period, are studied using a magneto-optical imaging method. Flux avalanches are observed when the overlap between the top and bottom layers is large even if the width of each strip is well below the threshold value. In addition, anomalous linear avalanches perpendicular to the strip are observed in the shifted strip array when the overlap is very large and the thickness of the superconductor is greater than the penetration depth. We discuss possible origins for the flux avalanches, including linear ones, by considering flux penetration calculated by the Campbell method assuming the Bean model.