Broadening of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless superconducting transition by inhomogeneity and finite-size effects

2009/09/30 by Lara Benfatto, L. Benfatto, C. Castellani +2 · 8 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.80.214506

published as Phys. Rev. B 80, 214506 (2009) · 11 pages, 9 figures, final version

openalex publication_date 2009/12/07 · arxiv created 2010/01/11 · arxiv updated 2010/01/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

We discuss the crucial role played by finite-size effects and inhomogeneity on the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition in two-dimensional superconductors. In particular, we focus on the temperature dependence of the resistivity, that is dominated by superconducting fluctuations above the BKT transition temperature T_BKT and by inhomogeneity below it. By means of a renormalization-group approach we establish a direct correspondence between the parameter values used to describe the BKT fluctuation regime and the distance between T_BKT and the mean-field Ginzburg-Landau transition temperature. Below T_BKT a resistive tail arises due to finite-size effects and inhomogeneity, that reflects also on the temperature dependence of the superfluid density. We apply our results to recent experimental data in superconducting LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ heterostructures, and we extract several informations on the microscopic properties of the system from our BKT fitting parameters. Finally, we compare our approach to recent data analysis presented in the literature, where the physical meaning of the parameter values in the BKT formulas has been often overlooked.

Citations

• The critical properties of the two-dimensional xy model
• Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems

Cited by

• The BKT Universality Class in the Presence of Correlated Disorder
• Charge-Stripe Order and Superconductivity in Ir1−xPtxTe2
• Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition to the Superconducting State of Heavy-Fermion Superlattices
• Effects of critical temperature inhomogeneities on the voltage–current characteristics of a planar superconductor near the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless transition
• Two-dimensional superconductivity at the interface of a Bi2Te3/FeTe heterostructure
• Role of the Vortex-Core Energy on the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition in Thin Films of NbN
• Nonlinear I−V characteristics of two-dimensional superconductors: Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless physics versus inhomogeneity
• Studies on DC transport and terahertz conductivity of granular molybdenum thin films for microwave radiation detector applications

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