41 research outputs found
Nonequilibrium electron cooling by NIS tunnel junctions
We discuss the theoretical framework to describe quasiparticle electric and
heat currents in NIS tunnel junctions in the dirty limit. The approach is based
on quasiclassical Keldysh-Usadel equations. We apply this theory to diffusive
NIS'S tunnel junctions. Here N and S are respectively normal metal and
superconductor reservoirs, I is an insulator layer and S' is a nonequilibrium
superconducting lead. We calculate the quasiparticle electric and heat currents
in such structures and consider the effect of inelastic relaxation in the S'
lead. We find that in the absence of strong relaxation the electric current and
the cooling power for voltages are suppressed. The value of this
suppression scales with the diffusive transparency parameter. We ascribe this
suppression to the effect of backtunneling of nonequilibrium quasiparticles
into the normal metal.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, proceedings, to be published in JLT