2007/09/07 by Hendrik Bluhm, Nicholas C. Koshnick, Bluhm, Hendrik +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) #Superconductivity in MgB2 and Alloys
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0709.1175
openalex publication_date 2007/09/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The authors report magnetic measurements of fluxoid transitions in mesoscopic, superconducting aluminum rings. The transitions are induced by applying a flux to the ring so that the induced supercurrent approaches the critical current. In a temperature range near Tc, only a single fluxoid enters or leaves at a time, leading to a final state above the ground state. Upon lowering the temperature, several fluxoids enter or leave at once, and the final state approaches the ground state, which can be reached below approximately 0.5 Tc. A model based on the widely used time dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory for gapless superconductors can only explain the data if unphysical parameters are used. Heating and quasiparticle diffusion may be important for a quantitative understanding of this experiment, which could provide a model system for studying the nonlinear dynamics of superconductors far from equilibrium.