Dissipation in ultra-thin current-carrying superconducting bridges; evidence for quantum tunneling of Pearl vortices

Abstract

We have made current-voltage (IV) measurements of artificially layered high-$T_c$ thin-film bridges. Scanning SQUID microscopy of these films provides values for the Pearl lengths $\Lambda$ that exceed the bridge width, and shows that the current distributions are uniform across the bridges. At high temperatures and high currents the voltages follow the power law $V\propto I^n$, with $n={\Phi }_0^2/8{\pi }^2\Lambda k_{B}T+1$, and at high temperatures and low-currents the resistance is exponential in temperature, in good agreement with the predictions for thermally activated vortex motion. At low temperatures, the IV's are better fit by $\ln V$ linear in $I^{-2}$. This is expected if the low temperature dissipation is dominated by quantum tunneling of Pearl vortices.

5 pages, 7 figs

References in corpus (3)

• Overcritical states of a superconductor strip in a magnetic environment
• Meissner-London currents in superconductors with rectangular cross section
• Superconducting properties of [BaCuO_x]_2/[CaCuO_2]_n artificial structures with ultrathick CaCuO_2 blocks

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Vortex-induced dissipation in narrow current-biased thin-film superconducting strips
• Current Assisted, Thermally Activated Flux Liberation in Ultrathin Nanopatterned NbN Superconducting Meander Structures
• Kinetic impedance and depairing in thin and narrow superconducting films
• Geometry-induced reduction of the critical current in superconducting nanowires
• Detection Mechanism in SNSPD: Numerical Results of a Conceptually Simple, Yet Powerful Detection Model
• Interaction of vortices in thin superconducting films and Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition
• Observation of a two-dimensional electron gas at the surface of annealed SrTiO3 single crystals by scanning tunneling spectroscopy
• Magnetic-field dependence of count rates in superconducting thin-film TaN single-photon detectors
• Size effects in the nonlinear resistance and flux creep in a virtual Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless state of superconducting films
• Quantum phase slips in a confined geometry
• Tuning critical field, critical current, and diode effect of narrow thin-film superconductors through engineering inhomogeneous Pearl length
• Multifunctional Superconducting Nanowire Quantum Sensors
• Resistance of 2D superconducting films
• Metal-Insulator Transition in a System of Superconducting Vortices Caused by a Metallic Gate
• Transport properties of clean and disordered Josephson junction arrays
• Vortex quantum tunnelling versus thermal activation in ultrathin superconducting nanoislands
• Suppression of Tunneling of Superconducting Vortices Caused by a Remote Gate: Example of an Extended Object Tunneling