Magnetic flux disorder and superconductor-insulator transition in nanohole thin films

Abstract

We study the superconductor-insulator transition in nanohole ultrathin films in a transverse magnetic field by numerical simulation of a Josephson-junction array model. Geometrical disorder due to the random location of nanoholes in the film corresponds to random flux in the array model. Monte Carlo simulation in the path-integral representation is used to determine the critical behavior and the universal resistivity at the transition as a function of disorder and average number of flux quanta per cell, $f_o$. The resistivity increases with disorder for noninteger $f_o$ while it decreases for integer $f_o$, and reaches a common constant value in a vortex-glass regime above a critical value of the flux disorder $D_f^c$. The estimate of $D_f^c$ and the resistivity increase for noninteger $f_o$ are consistent with recent experiments on ultrathin superconducting films with positional disordered nanoholes.

5 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. B, rap. comm

References in corpus (4)

• Frustration effects in rapidly rotating square and triangular optical lattices
• Quantum Monte Carlo study of a magnetic-field-driven 2D superconductor-insulator transition
• Conductivity of strongly correlated bosons in optical lattices in an Abelian synthetic magnetic field
• Resistive transition in frustrated Josephson-junction arrays on a honeycomb lattice

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Random gauge models of the superconductor-insulator transition in two-dimensional disordered superconductors
• Disorder-induced superconductor to insulator transition and finite phase stiffness in two-dimensional phase-glass models