Nonequilibrium effects in superconducting necks of nanoscopic dimensions

Abstract

We have fabricated superconducting connecting necks of Pb with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and studied their properties under magnetic fields near the transition to the resistive state. A striking phenomenology is found with two well defined conduction regimes as a function of the magnetic field. We discuss the possible origin of this behavior in terms of the interplay between the field dependence of the quasiparticle charge imbalance length ${\Lambda }_{Q\ast }$ and the length of the neck which is superconducting under field.

11 pages, 3 figures; to be published in Physics Letters A

References in corpus (2)

• Quantum suppression of superconductivity in ultrathin nanowires
• Andreev scattering in nanoscopic junctions at high magnetic fields

Cited by in corpus (4)

• On the use of STM superconducting tips at very low temperatures
• Proximity effect and strong coupling superconductivity in nanostructures built with an STM
• Superconducting nanobridges under magnetic fields
• Superconducting density of states at the border of an amorphous thin film grown by focused-ion-beam