Microscopic Oscillations in the Quantum Nucleation of Vortices Subject to Periodic Pinning Potential in a Thin Superconductor

Abstract

We present a theory for the decay of a supercurrent through nucleation of vortex-antivortex pairs in a two-dimensional superconductor in the presence of dissipation and of a periodic pinning potential. Through a powerful quantum electrodynamics formulation of the problem we show that the nucleation rate develops oscillations in its current-density dependence which are connected to the pinning periodicity. A remnant of the dissipation-driven localization transition is present, and an estimate of the nucleation rate suggests that these effects might be observable in real thin superconductors.

REVTeX file, 4 pages in two-column mode, 1 Postscript figure, to appear in Phys.Rev.B (Rapid Communications)

References in corpus (1)

• Vortex Pair Production and Decay of a 2-D Supercurrent by a Quantum Field Theory Approach

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Vortex-induced dissipation in narrow current-biased thin-film superconducting strips
• Pair Production of Open Strings - Relativistic versus Dissipative Dynamics
• Edge Tunneling of Vortices in Superconducting Thin Films
• Vacuum Instability and Pair Nucleation in a Dissipative Medium