Zeeman-limited Superconductivity in Crystalline Al Films

Abstract

We report the evolution of the Zeeman-mediated superconducting phase diagram (PD) in ultra-thin crystalline Al films. Parallel critical field measurements, down to 50 mK, were made across the superconducting tricritical point of films ranging in thickness from 7 ML to 30 ML. The resulting phase boundaries were compared with the quasi-classical theory of a Zeeman-mediated transition between a homogeneous BCS condensate and a spin polarized Fermi liquid. Films thicker than $\sim$20 ML showed good agreement with theory, but thinner films exhibited an anomalous PD that cannot be reconciled within a homogeneous BCS framework.

8 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Superconducting Spintronics
• Spin Imbalance and Spin-Charge Separation in a Mesoscopic Superconductor
• Spin-Resolved Tunneling Studies of the Exchange Field in EuS/Al Bilayers
• Fermi-liquid effects in the gapless state of marginally thin superconducting films
• Asymmetric Avalanches in the Condensate of a Zeeman-limited Superconductor

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