2006/07/04 by M. Kirkengen, Martin Kirkengen, Joakim Bergli +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Electron #Impurity #Mesoscopic physics #Ohmic contact #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Superconductivity #cond-mat.other
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.74.195321
arxiv created 2006/07/04 · openalex publication_date 2006/11/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
At low temperatures and voltages tunneling transport through an interface between a superconductor and hopping insulator is dominated by coherent two-electron tunneling between the Cooper-pair condensate and pairs of localized states [Kozub et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 107004 (2006)]. By detailed analysis of such transport we show that the interface resistance is extremely sensitive to the properties of the tunneling barriers, as well as to the asymptotic behavior of the localized states. In particular, a dramatic cancellation takes place for hydrogenlike impurities and ideal barriers. However, some disorder can lift the cancellations, restoring the interface transport. We also study the non-Ohmic behavior of the interface resistor and show that it is sensitive to the Coulomb correlation of the occupation probabilities of the involved localized states. It is expected that the non-Ohmic contribution to the I\text\ensuremath-V curve will experience pronounced mesoscopic (fingerprint) fluctuations.