2004/09/04 by Zhenyi Long, M. D. Stewart, M. D. Stewart, Jr. +3 · 16 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Coherence length #Condensed matter physics #Cooper pair #Density of states #Energy (signal processing) #Fermi energy #Fermi level #Omega #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Quasiparticle #Superconductivity #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.257001
published in Physical Review Letters 93(25), 257001 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages and 4 figures. This version is just the same as the old version except that we try to cut the unnecessary white space in the figures and make the whole paper look more compact
arxiv created 2004/09/04 · openalex publication_date 2004/12/13 · arxiv updated 2012/08/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present transport and tunneling measurements of Pb-Ag bilayers with thicknesses, dPb and dAg, that are much less than the superconducting coherence length. The transition temperature, Tc, and energy gap, \ensuremathΔ, in the tunneling density of states (DOS) decrease exponentially with dAg at fixed dPb. Simultaneously, a DOS that increases linearly from the Fermi energy grows and introduces states within the gap. The integrated subgap DOS approaches 40% of the normal state value in the lowest Tc film investigated (Tc\ensuremath≈0.1 Tc,bulkPb). This behavior suggests that a growing fraction of quasiparticles decouple from the superconductor as Tc\ensuremath→0. The linear dependence is consistent with the quasiparticles becoming trapped on integrable trajectories in the metal layer.