2009/02/16 by Alexandre Pourret, A. Pourret, Panayotis Spathis +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Condensed Matter Physics #Condensed matter physics #Electrode #Field (mathematics) #Magnetic field #Nernst effect #Nernst equation #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Superconductivity #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermodynamics #Vortex #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/11/5/055071
Submitted to New. J. Phys. for a focus issue on "Superconductors with Exotic Symmetries"
arxiv created 2009/02/16 · openalex publication_date 2009/05/29 · arxiv updated 2015/05/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In amorphous superconducting thin films of Nb 0.15 Si 0.85 and InO x , a finite Nernst coefficient can be detected in a wide range of temperature and magnetic field. Due to the negligible contribution of normal quasi-particles, superconducting fluctuations easily dominate the Nernst response in the entire range of study. In the vicinity of the critical temperature and in the zero-field limit, the magnitude of the signal is in quantitative agreement with what is theoretically expected for the Gaussian fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter. Even at higher temperatures and finite magnetic field, the Nernst coefficient is set by the size of superconducting fluctuations. The Nernst coefficient emerges as a direct probe of the ghost critical field, the normal-state mirror of the upper critical field. Moreover, upon leaving the normal state with fluctuating Cooper pairs, we show that the temperature evolution of the Nernst coefficient is different depending on whether the system enters a vortex solid, a vortex liquid or a phase-fluctuating superconducting regime.