Abrikosov fluxonics in washboard nanolandscapes

Abstract

Abrikosov fluxonics, a domain of science and engineering at the interface of superconductivity research and nanotechnology, is concerned with the study of properties and dynamics of Abrikosov vortices in nanopatterned superconductors, with particular focus on their confinement, manipulation, and exploitation for emerging functionalities. Vortex pinning, guided vortex motion, and the ratchet effect are three main fluxonic ``tools'' which allow for the dynamical (pinned or moving), the directional (angle-dependent), and the orientational (current polarity-sensitive) control over the fluxons, respectively. Thanks to the periodicity of the vortex lattice, several groups of effects emerge when the vortices move in a periodic pinning landscape: Spatial commensurability of the location of vortices with the underlying pinning nanolandscape leads to a reduction of the dc resistance and the microwave loss at the so-called matching fields. Temporal synchronization of the displacement of vortices with the number of pinning sites visited during one half ac cycle manifests itself as Shapiro steps in the current-voltage curves. Delocalization of vortices oscillating under the action of a high-frequency ac drive can be tuned by a superimposed dc bias. In this short review a choice of experimental results on the vortex dynamics in the presence of periodic pinning in Nb thin films is presented. The consideration is limited to one particular type of artificial pinning structures --- directly written nanolandscapes of the washboard type, which are fabricated by focused ion beam milling and focused electron beam induced deposition. The reported results are relevant for the development of fluxonic devices and the reduction of microwave losses in superconducting planar transmission lines.

Brief review on the basis of an invited lecture delivered at the 9th international conference in school format on Vortex Matter in Nanostructured Suprconductors (12-17 September 2015, Rhodes, Greece); 20 pages, 9 figures

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Cited by in corpus (15)

• Roadmap on Spin-Wave Computing
• Focused electron beam induced deposition meets materials science
• Magnon-Fluxon interaction in a ferromagnet/superconductor heterostructure
• Supersonic dynamics of guided magnetic flux quanta
• Radiofrequency generation by coherently moving fluxons
• Pinning effects on self-heating and flux-flow instability in superconducting films near $T_c$
• Pinning effects on flux flow instability in epitaxial Nb thin films
• Reduction of microwave loss by mobile fluxons in grooved Nb films
• Pinning effects on hot-electron vortex flow instability in superconducting films
• Active control of thermomagnetic avalanches in superconducting Nb films with tunable anisotropy
• Tuning electric charge scattering in YBCO single crystals via irradiation with MeV electrons
• Zero-bias Shapiro steps in asymmetric pinning nanolandscapes
• Vortex Guidance and Transport in Channeled Pinning Arrays
• Nucleation and Arrangement of Abrikosov Vortices in Hybrid Superconductor-Ferromagnetic Nanostructure
• Nonreciprocal magnon fluxonics upon ferromagnet/superconductor hybrids