No Arabic abstract
We have studied the temperature dependence of the in-plane resistivity of NbN/AlN multilayer samples with varying insulating layer thickness in magnetic fields up to 7 Tesla parallel and perpendicular to the films. The upper critical field shows a crossover from 2D to 3D behavior in parallel fields. The irreversibility lines have the form (1-T/Tc)^alpha, where alpha varies from 4/3 to 2 with increasing anisotropy. The results are consistent with simultaneous melting and decoupling transitions for low anisotropy sample, and with melting of decoupled pancakes in the superconducting layers for higher anisotropy samples.
We investigated the suitability of AlN as a buffer layer for NbN superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) on GaAs. The NbN films with a thickness of 3.3 nm to 20 nm deposited onto GaAs substrates with AlN buffer layer, demonstrate a higher critical temperature, critical current density and lower residual resistivity in comparison to films deposited onto bare substrates. Unfortunately, the thermal coupling of the NbN film to the substrate weakens. SNSPDs made of 4.9 nm thick NbN films on buffered substrates (in comparison to detectors made from NbN films on bare GaAs) demonstrate three orders of magnitude lower dark count rates and about ten times higher detection efficiency at 900 nm being measured at 90% of the critical current. The system timing jitter of SNSPDs on buffered substrates is 72 ps which is 36 ps lower than those on bare substrate. However, a weaker thermal coupling of NbN nanowire to the buffered substrate leads to a latching effect at bias currents > 0.97 IC.
We analyze the pump wavelength dependence for the photo-induced enhancement of interlayer coupling in La1.885Ba0.115CuO4, which is promoted by optical melting of the stripe order. In the equilibrium superconducting state (T < Tc = 13 K), in which stripes and superconductivity coexist, time-domain THz spectroscopy reveals a photo-induced blue-shift of the Josephson Plasma Resonance after excitation with optical pulses polarized perpendicular to the CuO2 planes. In the striped, non-superconducting state (Tc < T < T_SO = 40 K) a transient plasma resonance similar to that seen below Tc appears from a featureless equilibrium reflectivity. Most strikingly, both these effects become stronger upon tuning of the pump wavelength from the mid-infrared to the visible, underscoring an unconventional competition between stripe order and superconductivity, which occurs on energy scales far above the ordering temperature.
Since the very first experimental realization of Josephson flux-flow oscillator (FFO), its theoretical description has been limited by the phenomenological per- turbed sine-Gordon equation (PSGE). While PSGE can qualitatively describe the topological excitations in Josephson junctions that are sine-Gordon solitons or flux- ons, it is unable to capture essential physical phenomena of a realistic system such as the coupling between tunnel currents and electromagnetic radiation. Furthermore, PSGE neglects any dependence on energy gaps of superconductors and makes no distinction between symmetric and asymmetric junctions: those made of two iden- tical or two different superconducting materials. It was not until recently when it became possible to calculate properties of FFO by taking into account information about energy gaps of superconductors [D. R. Gulevich et al., Phys. Rev. B 96, 024215 (2017)]. Such approach is based on the microscopic tunneling theory and has been shown to describe essential features of symmetric Nb-AlOx-Nb junctions. Here we extend this approach to asymmetric Nb-AlN-NbN junctions and compare the calculated current-voltage characteristics to our experimental results.
We present a physically consistent interpretation of the dc electrical properties of niobiumnitride (NbN)-based superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB-) mixers, using concepts of nonequilibrium superconductivity. Through this we clarify what physical information can be extracted from the resistive transition and the dc current-voltage characteristics, measured at suitably chosen temperatures, and relevant for device characterization and optimization. We point out that the intrinsic spatial variation of the electronic properties of disordered superconductors, such as NbN, leads to a variation from device to device.
Higgs mode in superconductors, i.e. the collective amplitude mode of the order parameter does not associate with charge nor spin fluctuations, therefore it does not couple to the electromagnetic field in the linear response regime. On the contrary to this common understanding, here, we demonstrate that, if the dc supercurrent is introduced into the superconductor, the Higgs mode becomes infrared active and is directly observed in the linear optical conductivity measurement. We observed a sharp resonant peak at $omega=2Delta$ in the optical conductivity spectrum of a thin-film NbN in the presence of dc supercurrent, showing a reasonable agreement with the recent theoretical prediction. The method as proven by this work opens a new pathway to study the Higgs mode in a wide variety of superconductors.