We report a detailed study of the pairing resonance via tunneling density of states in ultra-thin superconducting Al films in supercritical magnetic fields. Particular emphasis is placed on effects of the perpendicular component of the magnetic field on the resonance energy and magnitude. Though the resonance is broadened and attenuated by $H_bot$ as expected, its energy is shifted upward linearly with $H_bot$. Extension of the original theory of the resonance to include strong perpendicular fields shows that at sufficiently large $H_bot$ the overlap of the broadened resonance tail with the underlying degenerate Fermi sea alters the spectral distribution of the resonance via the exclusion principle. This leads to the shift of the the resonance feature to higher energy.
A new type of Kondo effect peculiar to unconventional superconductors is studied theoretically by using the Wilsons numerical renormalization group method. In this case, an angular momentum of a Cooper pair plays an important role in the Kondo effect. It produces multichannel exchange couplings with a local spin. Here we focus on a $p_x +i p_y$-wave state which is a full gap system. The calculated impurity susceptibility shows that the local spin is almost quenched by the Kondo effect in the strong coupling region ($T_{rm K}/Delta to infty$), while the ground state is always a spin doublet over all the $T_{rm K}/Delta$ region. Here $T_{rm K}$ and $Delta$ are the Kondo temperature and the superconducting energy gap, respectively. This is different from the s-wave pairing case where the Kondo singlet is realized for large $T_{rm K}/Delta$ values. The strong coupling analysis shows that the $p_x +i p_y$-wave Cooper pair is connected to the Kondo singlet via the orbital dynamics of the paired electrons, generating the spin of the ground state. This type of Kondo effect reflects the symmetry of the conduction electron system.
Vortices in superconductors driven at microwave frequencies exhibit a response related to the interplay between the vortex viscosity, pinning strength, and flux creep effects. At the same time, the trapping of vortices in superconducting microwave resonant circuits contributes excess loss and can result in substantial reductions in the quality factor. Thus, understanding the microwave vortex response in superconducting thin films is important for the design of such circuits, including superconducting qubits and photon detectors, which are typically operated in small, but non-zero, magnetic fields. By cooling in fields of the order of 100 $mu$T and below, we have characterized the magnetic field and frequency dependence of the microwave response of a small density of vortices in resonators fabricated from thin films of Re and Al, which are common materials used in superconducting microwave circuits. Above a certain threshold cooling field, which is different for the Re and Al films, vortices become trapped in the resonators. Vortices in the Al resonators contribute greater loss and are influenced more strongly by flux creep effects than in the Re resonators. This different behavior can be described in the framework of a general vortex dynamics model.
We present low temperature tunneling density of states measurements of Pauli-limited Al films in which the Zeeman and orbital contributions to the critical field are comparable. We show that films in the thickness range of 6-7 nm exhibit a reentrant parallel critical field transition which is associated with a high entropy superconducting phase, similar to the high entropy solid phase of 3He responsible for the Pomeranchuk effect. This phase is characterized by an excess of states near the Fermi energy so long as the parallel critical field transition remains second order. Theoretical fits to the zero bias tunneling conductance are in good agreement with the data well below the transition but theory deviates significantly near the transition. The discrepancy is a consequence of the emergence of e-e interaction correlations as one enters the normal state.
We study conditions for the emergence of the preformed Cooper pairs in materials hosting flat bands. As a particular example, we consider time-reversal symmetric pseudospin-1 semimetal, with a pair of three-band crossing points at which a flat band intersects with a Dirac cone, and focus on the s-wave inter-node pairing channel. The nearly dispersionless nature of the flat band promotes local Cooper pair formation so that the system can be considered as an array of superconducting grains. Due to dispersive bands, Andreev scattering between the grains gives rise to the global phase-coherent superconductivity at low temperatures. We develop a theory to calculate transition temperature between the preformed Cooper pair state and the phase-coherent state for different interaction strengths in the Cooper channel.
Superconductivity arises from two distinct quantum phenomena: electron pairing and long-range phase coherence. In conventional superconductors, the two quantum phenomena generally take place simultaneously, while the electron pairing occurs at higher temperature than the long-range phase coherence in the underdoped high-Tc cuprate superconductors. Recently, whether electron pairing is also prior to long-range phase coherence in single-layer FeSe film on SrTiO3 substrate is under debate. Here, by measuring Knight shift and nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate, we unambiguously reveal a pseudogap behavior below Tp ~ 60 K in two layered FeSe-based superconductors with quasi-two-dimension. In the pseudogap regime, a weak diamagnetic signal and a remarkable Nernst effect are also observed, which indicate that the observed pseudogap behavior is related to superconducting fluctuations. These works confirm that strong phase fluctuation is an important character in the two-dimensional iron-based superconductors as widely observed in high-Tc cuprate superconductors.