Electron-beam-induced shift in the apparent position of a pinned vortex in a thin superconducting film

Abstract

When an electron beam strikes a superconducting thin film near a pinned vortex, it locally increases the temperature-dependent London penetration depth and perturbs the circulating supercurrent, thereby distorting the vortex's magnetic field toward the heated spot. This phenomenon has been used to visualize vortices pinned in SQUIDs using low-temperature scanning electron microscopy. In this paper I develop a quantitative theory to calculate the displacement of the vortex-generated magnetic-flux distribution as a function of the distance of the beam spot from the vortex core. The results are calculated using four different models for the spatial distribution of the thermal power deposited by the electron beam.

9 pages, 6 figures, resubmitted to PRB with referee-suggested revisions, includes new paragraph on numerical evaluation

References in corpus (4)

• Vortices and Superfluidity in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas
• Sheet-current distribution in a dc SQUID washer probed by vortices
• Low-frequency flux noise and visualization of vortices in a YBa2Cu3O7 dc SQUID washer with an integrated input coil
• Microscopic Analysis of Low-Frequency Flux Noise in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_7$ Direct Current Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Effect of vortex hotspots on the radio-frequency surface resistance of superconductors