Quantum Tunneling of the Order Parameter in Superconducting Nanowires

By D. Golubev, A. Zaikin. 2000

157 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Quantum tunneling of the superconducting order parameter gives rise to the phase slippage process which controls the resistance of ultrathin superconducting wires at sufficiently low temperatures. If the quantum phase slip rate is high, superconductivity is completely destroyed by quantum fluctuations and the wire resistance never decreases below its normal state value. We present a detailed microscopic theory of quantum phase slips in homogeneous superconducting nanowires. Focusing our attention on relatively short wires we evaluate the quantum tunneling rate for phase slips, both the quasiclassical exponent and the pre-exponential factor. In very thin and dirty metallic wires the effect is shown to be clearly observable even at $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{T}0.$ Our results are fully consistent with recent experimental findings [A. Bezryadin, C.N. Lau, and M. Tinkham, Nature (London) 404, 971 (2000)] which provide direct evidence for the effect of quantum phase slips.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e0e1ad30b67244ad75d804d9b26144cf166cca04

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

  1. Yuli V. Nazarov
  2. J. Mooij
  3. Franco Nori

In Condensed Matter Physics

  1. Yuli V. Nazarov
  2. J. Mooij

Citations in the corpus