Manipulating superconducting fluctuations by the Little–Parks–de Gennes effect in ultrasmall Al loops

The destruction of superconducting phase coherence by quantum fluctuations and the control of these fluctuations are a problem of long-standing interest, with recent impetus provided by the relevance of these issues to the pursuit of high temperature superconductivity. Building on the work of Little...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 109; no. 37; pp. 14819 - 14823
Main Authors Staley, Neal E, Liu, Ying
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 11.09.2012
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
aluminum
Aluminum - chemistry
Circumferences
Conductivity
Cylinders
Electric Conductivity
electrical conductivity
High temperature
Kinetic energy
Lead
Magnetic fields
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning
Models, Chemical
Phase coherence
Phase transitions
Physical Sciences
quantum dots
Quantum physics
Quantum Theory
Superconductivity
Superconductors
Temperature
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Summary:The destruction of superconducting phase coherence by quantum fluctuations and the control of these fluctuations are a problem of long-standing interest, with recent impetus provided by the relevance of these issues to the pursuit of high temperature superconductivity. Building on the work of Little and Parks, de Gennes predicted more than three decades ago that superconductivity could be destroyed near half-integer-flux quanta in ultrasmall loops, resulting in a destructive regime, and restored by adding a superconducting side branch, which does not affect the flux quantization condition. We report the experimental observation of this Little–Parks–de Gennes effect in Al loops prepared by advanced e-beam lithography. We show that the effect can be used to restore the lost phase coherence by employing side branches.
Bibliography:http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1200664109
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Edited by Alexey Bezryadin, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, and accepted by the Editorial Board August 6, 2012 (received for review January 12, 2012)
Author contributions: N.E.S. and Y.L. designed research; N.E.S. performed experiment; N.E.S. and Y.L. analyzed data; and N.E.S. and Y.L. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1200664109