Quasiparticle relaxation in superconducting nanostructures

Abstract

We examine energy relaxation of non-equilibrium quasiparticles in "dirty" superconductors with the electron mean free path much shorter than the superconducting coherence length. Relaxation of low-energy non-equilibrium quasiparticles is dominated by phonon emission. We derive the corresponding collision integral and find the quasiparticle relaxation rate. The latter is sensitive to the breaking of time reversal symmetry (TRS) by a magnetic field (or magnetic impurities). As a concrete application of the developed theory, we address quasiparticle trapping by a vortex and a current-biased constriction. We show that trapping of hot quasiparticles may predominantly occur at distances from the vortex core, or the constriction, significantly exceeding the superconducting coherence length.

12 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Bogoliubov Quasiparticles in Superconducting Qubits
• Coexistence of nonequilibrium density and equilibrium energy distribution of quasiparticles in a superconducting qubit
• Electron cooling by phonons in superconducting proximity structures
• Electron-phonon cooling power in Anderson insulators
• Emptiness Formation in Polytropic Quantum Liquids
• Microscopic origin of the nemato-elastic coupling and dynamics of hybridized collective nematic-phonon excitations
• Phase slip statistics of a single isolated flux-biased superconducting ring
• Local bistability under microwave heating for spatially mapping disordered superconductors
• Excess quasiparticles and their dynamics in the presence of subgap states
• Electron-phonon heat transfer in giant vortex states