Alternating Superconductor--Insulator Transport Characteristics in a Quantum Vortex Chain

Abstract

Experimental studies of magnetoresistance in thin superconducting strips subject to a perpendicular magnetic field B exhibit a multitude of transitions, from superconductor to insulator and vice versa alternately. Motivated by this observation, we study a theoretical model for the transport properties of a ladder--like superconducting device close to a superconductor--insulator transition. In this regime, strong quantum fluctuations dominate the dynamics of the vortex chain forming along the device. Utilizing a mapping of the vortex system at low energies to one-dimensional (1D) Fermions at a chemical potential dictated by B, we find that a quantum phase transition of the Ising type occurs at critical values of the vortex filling, from a superconducting phase near integer filling to an insulator near 1/2-filling. The current--voltage (I-V) characteristics of the weakly disordered device in the presence of a d.c. current bias I is evaluated, and investigated as a function of B, I, the temperature T and the disorder strength. In the Ohmic regime (I/e << T), the resulting magnetoresistance R(B) exhibits oscillations similar to the experimental observation. More generally, we find that the I-V characteristics of the system manifests a dramatically distinct behavior in the superconducting and insulating regimes.

10 pages, 3 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1010.0664

References in corpus (4)

• Majorana Fermions in Strongly Interacting Helical Liquids
• Heat transport of clean spin-ladders coupled to phonons: Umklapp scattering and drag
• Weber blockade theory of magnetoresistance oscillations in superconducting strips
• Superconductor-Insulator Magneto-Oscillations in Superconducting Strips

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Umklapp scattering as the origin of $T$-linear resistivity in the normal state of high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors
• Weber blockade in superconducting nanowires
• Origin of chaos near three-dimensional quantum vortices: A general Bohmian theory
• Spinful fermionic ladders at incommensurate filling: Phase diagram, local perturbations, and ionic potentials
• Superfluid-Insulator transition of quantum Hall domain walls in bilayer graphene
• Helical quantum Hall Edge modes in bilayer graphene: a realization of quantum spin-ladders
• Vortex crossing, trapping and pinning in superconducting nanowires of a NbSe${}_2$ two-dimensional crystal
• Nernst Effect as a Signature of Quantum Fluctuations in Quasi-1D Superconductors