No Arabic abstract
The interplay between quenched disorder and critical behavior in quantum phase transitions is conceptually fascinating and of fundamental importance for understanding phase transitions. However, it is still unclear whether or not the quenched disorder influences the universality class of quantum phase transitions. More crucially, the absence of superconducting-metal transitions under in-plane magnetic fields in 2D superconductors imposes constraints on the universality of quantum criticality. Here, we discover the tunable universality class of superconductor-metal transition by changing the disorder strength in $beta$-W films with varying thickness. The finite-size scaling uncovers the switch of universality class: quantum Griffiths singularity to multiple quantum criticality at a critical thickness of $t_{c perp 1}sim 8 nm$ and then from multiple quantum criticality to single criticality at $t_{cperp 2}sim 16 nm$. Moreover, the superconducting-metal transition is observed for the first time under in-plane magnetic fields and the universality class is changed at $t_{c parallel }sim 8 nm$. The discovery of tunable universality class under both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetic fields provides broad information for the disorder effect on superconducting-metal transitions and quantum criticality.
We study the critical charge dynamics of the superconducting to the normal-state transition for LSCO thin films with a wide range of the Sr concentration, by measuring the frequency-dependent excess parts of the complex microwave conductivity, which is induced by the superconducting fluctuations. We present a dynamic scaling analysis of the complex fluctuation conductivity, which includes the information on the universality class and the dimensionality of the critical charge dynamics as a function of the Sr concentration, the film thickness and the magnetic field. In our previous study (H. Kitano et al., Phys. Rev. B 73, 092504 (2006).), the 2D-XY critical dynamics for underdoped LSCO and the 3D-XY critical dynamics for optimally doped LSCO were reported. In this study, we observed a novel two-dimensional unknown critical charge dynamics for overdoped thin films from x=0.17 to 0.20, which is clearly distinguished from the 2D-XY critical dynamics. Through the systematic measurements by changing the film thickness or by applying small magnetic field, it was confirmed that this unusual behavior, which is referred as 2D-U below, was not induced by the finite size effect but was intrinsic to the overdoped LSCO. Thus, it was found that the critical behavior in the phase diagram of LSCO is classified into the following three types; (i) 2D-XY for underdoped region, (ii) 3D-XY for optimally doped region, and (iii) 2D-U for overdoped region. In other words, the dimensionality in the critical charge dynamics is changed twice with hole doping. We discuss possible origins of such anomalous dimensional crossovers with hole doping, including an interpretation based on the possible existence of a hidden quantum critical point near the optimally doped region.
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 upper critical field in type II superconductors is limited by the Pauli paramagnetic limit. In superconductors with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling this limit can be overcome by forming a helical state. Here we quantitatively study the magnetic field-temperature phase diagram of finite-size superconductors with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We discuss the effect of finite size and shape anisotropy. We demonstrate that the critical field is controllable by intrinsic parameters such as spin-orbit coupling strength and tunable parameters such as sample geometry and applied field direction. Our study opens new avenues for the design of superconducting spin-valves.
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.
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.