No Arabic abstract
Since the early days of Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, it has been predicted that a sufficiently large supercurrent can close the energy gap in a superconductor and creates gapless Bogoliubov quasiparticles through the Doppler shift of quasiparticle energy due to the Cooper pair momentum. In this gapless superconducting state, zero-energy quasiparticles reside on a segment of the normal state Fermi surface, while its remaining part is still gapped. The finite density of states of field-induced quasiparticles, known as the Volovik effect, has been observed in tunneling and specific heat measurements on d- and s-wave superconductors. However, the segmented Fermi surface of a finite-momentum state carrying a supercurrent has never been detected directly. Here we use quasiparticle interference (QPI) technique to image field-controlled Fermi surface of Bi$_2$Te$_3$ thin films proximitized by the superconductor NbSe$_2$. By applying a small in-plane magnetic field, a screening supercurrent is induced which leads to finite-momentum pairing on topological surface states of Bi$_2$Te$_3$. Our measurements and analysis reveal the strong impact of finite Cooper pair momentum on the quasiparticle spectrum, and thus pave the way for STM study of pair density wave and FFLO states in unconventional superconductors.
We investigate the stability of spatially uniform solutions for the collisionless dynamics of a fermionic superfluid. We demonstrate that, if the system size is larger than the superfluid coherence length, the solution characterized by a periodic in time order parameter is unstable with respect to spatial fluctuations. The instability is due to the parametric excitations of pairing modes with opposite momenta. The growth of spatial modulations is suppressed by nonlinear effects resulting in a state characterized by a random superposition of wave packets of the superfluid order parameter. We suggest that this state can be probed by spectroscopic noise measurements.
Unusual transport properties of superconducting (SC) materials, such as the under doped cuprates, low dimensional superconductors in strong magnetic fields, and insulating films near the Insulator Superconductor Transition (IST), have been attributed to the formation of inhomogeneous phases. Difficulty correlating the behaviors with observations of the inhomogeneities make these connections uncertain. Of primary interest here are proposals that insulating films near the IST, which show an activated resistance and giant positive magnetoresistance, contain islands of Cooper Pairs (CPs). Here we present evidence that these types of inhomogeneities are essential to such an insulating phase in amorphous Bi (a-Bi) films deposited on substrates patterned with nanometer-sized holes. The patterning induces film thickness variations, and corresponding coupling constant variations, that transform the composition of the insulator from localized electrons to CPs. Analyses near the thickness-tuned ISTs of films on nine different substrates show that weak links between SC islands dominate the transport. In particular, the ISTs all occur when the link resistance approaches the resistance quantum for pairs. These observations lead to a detailed picture of CPs localized by spatial variations of the superconducting coupling constant.
We apply a recently-developed low-field technique to inductively measure the critical pair momentum $p_c$ in thin, underdoped films of Y$_{1-x}$Ca$_{x}$Ba$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{7-delta}$ and Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+delta}$ reflecting a wide range of hole doping. We observe that $p_c propto hbar/xi$ scales with $T_c$ and therefore superfluid density $n_s(Trightarrow0)$ in our two-dimensional cuprate films. This relationship was famously predicted by a universal model of the cuprates with a textit{doping-independent} superconducting gap, but has not been observed by high field measurements of the coherence length $xi$ due to field-induced phenomena not included in the theory.
Pair density wave (PDW) states are defined by a spatially modulating superconductive order-parameter. To search for such states in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) we use high-speed atomic-resolution scanned Josephson-tunneling microscopy (SJTM). We detect a PDW state whose electron-pair density and energy-gap modulate spatially at the wavevectors of the preexisting charge density wave (CDW) state. The PDW couples linearly to both the s-wave superconductor and to the CDW, and exhibits commensurate domains with discommensuration phase-slips at the boundaries, conforming to those of the lattice-locked commensurate CDW. Nevertheless, we find a global $deltaPhi sim pm2pi/3$ phase difference between the PDW and CDW states, possibly owing to the Cooper-pair wavefunction orbital content. Our findings presage pervasive PDW physics in the many other TMDs that sustain both CDW and superconducting states.
We propose a scheme to demonstrate the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a system of a superconducting Cooper-pair box coupled to a nanomechanical resonator. In this scheme, the nanomechanical resonator plays an important role to contribute additional auxiliary energy levels to the Cooper-pair box so that the EIT phenomenon could be realized in such a system. We call it here resonator-assisted induced transparency (RAIT). This RAIT technique provides a detection scheme in a real experiment to measure physical properties, such as the vibration frequency and the decay rate, of the coupled nanomechanical resonator.