No Arabic abstract
Nowadays superconductors serve in numerous applications, from high-field magnets to ultra-sensitive detectors of radiation. Mesoscopic superconducting devices, i.e. those with nanoscale dimensions, are in a special position as they are easily driven out of equilibrium under typical operating conditions. The out-of-equilibrium superconductors are characterized by non-equilibrium quasiparticles. These extra excitations can compromise the performance of mesoscopic devices by introducing, e.g., leakage currents or decreased coherence times in quantum devices. By applying an external magnetic field, one can conveniently suppress or redistribute the population of excess quasiparticles. In this article we present an experimental demonstration and a theoretical analysis of such effective control of quasiparticles, resulting in electron cooling both in the Meissner and vortex states of a mesoscopic superconductor. We introduce a theoretical model of quasiparticle dynamics which is in quantitative agreement with the experimental data.
Nematicity is ubiquitous in electronic phases of high transition temperature superconductors, particularly in iron-based superconductors (IBSCs). Order parameter that characterizes the nematic phase has been investigated in momentum space, but its real-space arrangement remains largely unclear. We use linear dichroism (LD) in low-temperature laser-photoemission electron microscope to map out the nematic order parameter of nonmagentic FeSe and antiferromagnetic BaFe2(As0.87P0.13)2. In contrast to the structural domains that have atomic-scale domain walls, the LD patterns in both materials show peculiar sinusoidal waves of electronic nematicity with mesoscopic wavelength. The analysis reveals that the nematic order has an extremely long coherence length, more than 1000 times longer than the unit cell. Our direct visualization of electronic spatial variation uncovers a new fundamental aspect of quantum liquid crystalline states of correlated electrons in IBSCs.
We investigate mesoscopic Josephson junction arrays created by patterning superconducting disks on monolayer graphene, concentrating on the high-$T/T_c$ regime of these devices and the phenomena which contribute to the superconducting glass state in diffusive arrays. We observe features in the magnetoconductance at rational fractions of flux quanta per array unit cell, which we attribute to the formation of flux-quantized vortices. The applied fields at which the features occur are well described by Ginzburg-Landau simulations that take into account the number of unit cells in the array. We find that the mean conductance and universal conductance fluctuations are both enhanced below the critical temperature and field of the superconductor, with greater enhancement away from the graphene Dirac point.
The spectrum of a segment of InAs nanowire, confined between two superconducting leads, was measured as function of gate voltage and superconducting phase difference using a third normal-metal tunnel probe. Sub-gap resonances for odd electron occupancy---interpreted as bound states involving a confined electron and a quasiparticle from the superconducting leads, reminiscent of Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states---evolve into Kondo-related resonances at higher magnetic fields. An additional zero bias peak of unknown origin is observed to coexist with the quasiparticle bound states.
Magnetic impurities inserted in a $s$-wave superconductor give rise to spin-polarized in-gap states called Shiba states. We study the back-action of these induced states on the dynamics of the classical moments. We show that the Shiba state pertains to both reactive and dissipative torques acting on the precessing classical spin that can be detected through ferromagnetic resonance measurements. Moreover, we highlight the influence of the bulk states as well as the effect of the finite linewidth of the Shiba state on the magnetization dynamics. Finally, we demonstrate that the torques are a direct measure of the even and odd frequency triplet pairings generated by the dynamics of the magnetic impurity. Our approach offers non-invasive alternative to the STM techniques used to probe the Shiba states.
We study the surface Andreev bound states (SABSs) and quasiparticle tunneling spectroscopy of three-dimensional (3D) chiral superconductor by changing the surface (interface) misorientation angle of chiral superconductors. We obtain analytical formula of the energy dispersion of SABS for general pair potential when an original 4$times$4 BdG Hamiltonian can be reduced to be two 2$times$2 blocks. The resulting SABS for 3D chiral superconductors with pair potential given by $k_z(k_x + ik_y)^{ u}$ $({ u} = 1, 2)$ has a complicated energy dispersion due to the coexistence of both point and line nodes. We focus on the tunneling spectroscopy of this pairing in the presence of applied magnetic field which induces Doppler shift of quasiparticle spectra. By contrast to previous known Doppler effect in unconventional superconductors, zero bias conductance dip can change into zero bias conductance peak by external magnetic field. We also study SABSs and tunneling spectroscopy for possible pairing symmetries of UPt$_3$ . For this purpose, we extend a standard formula of tunneling conductance of unconventional superconductor junctions in order to treat spin-triplet non-unitary pairings. The magneto tunneling spectroscopy, i.e., tunneling spectroscopy in the presence of magnetic field, can serve as a guide to determine the pairing symmetry of this material.