1,384 research outputs found
Universal transport in 2D granular superconductors
The transport properties of quench condensed granular superconductors are
presented and analyzed. These systems exhibit transitions from insulating to
superconducting behavior as a function of inter-grain spacing.
Superconductivity is characterized by broad transitions in which the resistance
drops exponentially with reducing temperature. The slope of the log R versus T
curves turns out to be universaly dependent on the normal state film resistance
for all measured granular systems. It does not depend on the material, critical
temperature, geometry, or experimental set-up. We discuss possible physical
scenarios to explain these findings.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Coexistence of Coulomb blockade and zero bias anomaly in a strongly coupled quantum dot
The current-voltage characteristics through a metallic quantum dot which is
well coupled to a metallic lead are measured. It is shown that the I-V curves
are composed of two contributions. One is a suppression of the tunneling
conductivity at the Fermi level and the second is an oscillating feature which
shifts with gate voltage. The results indicate that Zero-Bias-Anomaly and
Coulomb Blockade phenomena coexist in an asymmetric strongly coupled quantum
dot.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
The signature of a double quantum-dot structure in the I-V characteristics of a complex system
We demonstrate that by carefully analyzing the temperature dependent
characteristics of the I-V measurements for a given complex system it is
possible to determine whether it is composed of a single, double or multiple
quantum-dot structure. Our approach is based on the orthodox theory for a
double-dot case and is capable of simulating I-V characteristics of systems
with any resistance and capacitance values and for temperatures corresponding
to thermal energies larger than the dot level spacing. We compare I-V
characteristics of single-dot and double-dot systems and show that for a given
measured I-V curve considering the possibility of a second dot is equivalent to
decreasing the fit temperature. Thus, our method allows one to gain information
about the structure of an experimental system based on an I-V measurement.Comment: 12 pages 7 figure
Absence of weak antilocalization in ferromagnetic films
We present magnetoresistance measurements performed on ultrathin films of
amorphous Ni and Fe. In these films the Curie temperature drops to zero at
small thickness, making it possible to study the effect of ferromagnetism on
localization. We find that non-ferromagnetic films are characterized by
positive magnetoresistance. This is interpreted as resulting from weak
antilocalization due to strong Bychkov-Rashba spin orbit scattering. As the
films become ferromagnetic the magnetoresistance changes sign and becomes
negative. We analyze our data to identify the individual contributions of weak
localization, weak antilocalization and anisotropic magnetoresistance and
conclude that the magnetic order suppresses the influence of spin-orbit effects
on localization phenomena in agreement with theoretical predictions.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Zero bias anomaly in a two dimensional granular insulator
We compare tunneling density of states (TDOS) into two ultrathin Ag films,
one uniform and one granular, for different degrees of disorder. The uniform
film shows a crossover from Altshuler-Aronov (AA) zero bias anomaly to Efros
Shklovskii (ES) like Coulomb gap as the disorder is increased. The granular
film, on the other hand, exhibits AA behavior even deeply in the insulating
regime. We analyze the data and find that granularity introduces a new regime
for the TDOS. While the conductivity is dominated by hopping between clusters
of grains and is thus insulating, the TDOS probes the properties of an
individual cluster which is "metallic".Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Ulta-slow relaxation in discontinuous-film based electron glasses
We present field effect measurements on discontinuous 2D thin films which are
composed of a sub monolayer of nano-grains of Au, Ni, Ag or Al. Like other
electron glasses these systems exhibit slow conductance relaxation and memory
effects. However, unlike other systems, the discontinuous films exhibit a
dramatic slowing down of the dynamics below a characteristic temperature .
is typically between 10-50K and is sample dependent. For the
sample exhibits a few other peculiar features such as repeatable conductance
fluctuations in millimeter size samples. We suggest that the enhanced system
sluggishness is related to the current carrying network becoming very dilute in
discontinuous films so that the system contains many parts which are
electrically very weakly connected and the transport is dominated by very few
weak links. This enables studying the glassy properties of the sample as it
transitions from a macroscopic sample to a mesocopic sample, hence, the results
provide new insight on the underlying physics of electron glasses.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Is a multiple excitation of a single atom equivalent to a single excitation of an ensemble of atoms?
Recent technological advances have enabled to isolate, control and measure
the properties of a single atom, leading to the possibility to perform
statistics on the behavior of single quantum systems. These experiments have
enabled to check a question which was out of reach previously: Is the
statistics of a repeatedly excitation of an atom N times equivalent to a single
excitation of an ensemble of N atoms? We present a new method to analyze
quantum measurements which leads to the postulation that the answer is most
probably no. We discuss the merits of the analysis and its conclusion.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure
Proximity effect in ultrathin Pb/Ag multilayers within the Cooper limit
We report on transport and tunneling measurements performed on ultra-thin
Pb/Ag (strong coupled superconductor/normal metal) multilayers evaporated by
quench condensation. The critical temperature and energy gap of the
heterostructures oscillate with addition of each layer, demonstrating the
validity of the Cooper limit model in the case of multilayers. We observe
excellent agreement with a simple theory for samples with layer thickness
larger than 30\AA . Samples with single layers thinner than 30\AA deviate from
the Cooper limit theory. We suggest that this is due to the "inverse proximity
effect" where the normal metal electrons improve screening in the
superconducting ultrathin layer and thus enhance the critical temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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