Dephasing of Cooper pairs and subgap electron transport in superconducting hybrids

Abstract

We argue that electron-electron interactions fundamentally restrict the penetration length of Cooper pairs into a diffusive normal metal (N) from a superconductor (S). At low temperatures this Cooper pair dephasing length $L_{\phi }$ remains finite and does not diverge at $T\to 0$. We evaluate the subgap conductance of NS hybrids in the presence of electron-electron interactions and demonstrate that this new length $L_{\phi }$ can be directly extracted from conductance measurements in such structures.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Scanning tunneling spectroscopy study of the proximity effect in a disordered two-dimensional metal
• Interplay between Josephson and Aharonov-Bohm effects in Andreev interferometers
• Microwave Admittance of Gold-Palladium Nanowires with Proximity-Induced Superconductivity
• Supercurrent dephasing by electron-electron interactions
• Phase-coherent thermoelectricity and non-equilibrium Josephson current in Andreev interferometers
• Decoherence of Cooper pairs and subgap magnetoconductance of superconducting hybrids