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The pairing temperature of superconducting thin films is expected to display, within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, oscillations as a function of the film thickness. We show that the pattern of these oscillations switches between two different periodicities at a density-dependent value of the superconducting coupling. The transition is most abrupt in the anti-adiabatic regime, where the Fermi energy is less than the Debye energy. To support our numerical data, we provide new analytical expressions for the chemical potential and the pairing temperature as a function of thickness, which only differ from the exact solution at weak coupling by exponentially-small corrections.
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The confinement of a superconductor in a thin film changes its Fermi-level density of states and is expected to change its critical temperature $T_c$. Previous calculations have reported large discontinuities of $T_c$ when the chemical potential coincides with a subband edge. By solving the BCS gap equation exactly, we show that such discontinuities are artifacts and that $T_c$ is a continuous function of the film thickness. We also find that $T_c$ is reduced in thin films compared with the bulk if the confinement potential is lower than a critical value, while for stronger confinement $T_c$ increases with decreasing film thickness, reaches a maximum, and eventually drops to zero. Our numerical results are supported by several exact solutions. We finally interpret experimental data for ultrathin lead thin films in terms of a thickness-dependent effective mass.
Thin-film superconductors with thickness 30 to 500 nm are used as non-equilibrium quantum detectors for photons, phonons or more exotic particles. One of the most basic questions in determining their limiting sensitivity is the efficiency with which the quanta of interest couple to the detected quasiparticles. As low temperature superconducting resonators, thin-films are attractive candidates for producing quantum-sensitive arrayable sensors and the readout uses an additional microwave probe. We have calculated the quasiparticle generation efficiency eta_s for low energy photons in a representative, clean thin-film superconductor (Al) operating well-below its superconductingtransition temperature as a function of film thickness, within the framework of the coupled kineticequations described by Chang and Scalapino.[J. J. Chang and D. J. Scalapino, J. Low Temp. Phys. 31, 1 (1978)]. We have also included the effect of a lower frequency probe. We show that phonon loss from the thin-film reduces eta_s by as much as 40% compared to earlier models that considered relatively thick films or infinite volumes. We also show that the presence of the probe and signal enhances the generation efficiency slightly. We conclude that the ultimate limiting noise equivalent power of this class of detector is determined by the thin-film geometry.
All non-interacting two-dimensional electronic systems are expected to exhibit an insulating ground state. This conspicuous absence of the metallic phase has been challenged only in the case of low-disorder, low density, semiconducting systems where strong interactions dominate the electronic state. Unexpectedly, over the last two decades, there have been multiple reports on the observation of a state with metallic characteristics on a variety of thin-film superconductors. To date, no theoretical explanation has been able to fully capture the existence of such a state for the large variety of superconductors exhibiting it. Here we show that for two very different thin-film superconductors, amorphous indium-oxide and a single-crystal of 2H-NbSe2, this metallic state can be eliminated by filtering external radiation. Our results show that these superconducting films are extremely sensitive to external perturbations leading to the suppression of superconductivity and the appearance of temperature independent, metallic like, transport at low temperatures. We relate the extreme sensitivity to the theoretical observation that, in two-dimensions, superconductivity is only marginally stable.
The techniques of growing films with different parameters in single process make it possible to build up a sample library promptly. In this work, with a precisely controlled moving mask, we synthetized superconducting La2-xCexCuO4+/-{delta} combinatorial films on one SrTiO3 substrate with the doping levels from x = 0.1 to 0.19. The monotonicity in doping along the designed direction is verified by micro-region x-ray diffraction and electric transport measurements. More importantly, by means of numerical simulation, the real change of doping levels is in accordance with a linear gradient variation of doping levels in the La2-xCexCuO4+/-{delta} combinatorial films. Our results indicate that it is promising to accurately investigate materials with critical composition by combinatorial film technique.
Vortex dynamics in superconductors have received a great deal of attention from both fundamental and applied researchers over the past few decades. Because of its critical role in the energy relaxation process of type-II superconductors, vortex dynamics have been deemed a key contributor to the response rate of the emerging superconducting single photon detector (SSPD). With the support of electrical transport measurements under external magnetic fields, vortex dynamics in superconducting a-MoSi thin films are investigated in this work. It is ascertained that the vortex state changes from pinned to flux flow under the influence of the Lorentz force. The critical vortex velocity v* and quasi-particle inelastic scattering time {tau}* under different magnetic fields are derived from the Larkin-Ovchinnikov model. Under high magnetic fields, the v* power law dependence (v*~B-1/2) collapses, i.e., v* tends to zero, which is attributed to the obstruction of flux flow by the intrinsic defects, while the {tau}* increases with the increasing magnetic field strength. In addition, the degree of vortex rearrangement is found to be enhanced by photon-induced reduction in potential barrier, which mitigates the adverse effect of film inhomogeneity on superconductivity in the a-MoSi thin films. The thorough understanding of the vortex dynamics in a-MoSi thin films under the effect of external stimuli is of paramount importance for both further fundamental research in this area and optimization of SSPD design.
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