Supercurrent in Nb/InAs-Nanowire/Nb Josephson junctions

We report on the fabrication and measurements of planar mesoscopic Josephson junctions formed by InAs nanowires coupled to superconducting Nb terminals. The use of Si-doped InAs-nanowires with different bulk carrier concentrations allowed to tune the properties of the junctions. We have studied the junction characteristics as a function of temperature, gate voltage, and magnetic field. In junctions with high doping concentrations in the nanowire Josephson supercurrent values up to 100\,nA are found. Owing to the use of Nb as superconductor the Josephson coupling persists at temperatures up to 4K. In all junctions the critical current monotonously decreased with the magnetic field, which can be explained by a recently developed theoretical model for the proximity effect in ultra-small Josephson junctions. For the low-doped Josephson junctions a control of the critical current by varying the gate voltage has been demonstrated. We have studied conductance fluctuations in nanowires coupled to superconducting and normal metal terminals. The conductance fluctuation amplitude is found to be about 6 times larger in superconducting contacted nanowires. The enhancement of the conductance fluctuations is attributed to phase-coherent Andreev reflection as well as to the large number of phase-coherent channels due to the large superconducting gap of the Nb electrodes.Comment: 5 Figure, submitted to Journal of Applied Physic

Scaling behaviour of relaxation dependencies in metaloxide superconductors

Superconducting glass state has been investigated in different types of metaloxide ceramics, Y-Ba-Cu-O, Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O, Ba-Pb-Bi-O, using the highly sensitive SQUID magnetometer. The analysis of long-time relaxation processes of thermoremanent magnetization m(sup trm) (+) = M(sub o) - Slnt displayed scaling dependence of the decay rate S = -dM/dlnt on quantity of trapped magnetic flux M(sub o): 1gs = 31g M(sub o) - observed universal dependence S is approximately M(sup 3) (sub o) seems to one of the features of superconducting glass state in metaloxide ceramics

Nonlinear Seebeck Effect in a Model Granular Superconductor

The change of the Josephson supercurrent density of a weakly-connected granular superconductor in response to externally applied arbitrary thermal gradient dT/dx (nonlinear Seebeck effect) is considered within a model of 3D Josephson junction arrays. For dT/dx>(dT/dx)_c, where (dT/dx)_c is estimated to be of the order of 10^4 K/m for YBCO ceramics with an average grain's size of 10 microns, the weak-links-dominated thermopower S (Seebeck coefficient) is predicted to become strongly dT/dx-dependent.Comment: REVTEX, no figure

Electric field dependence of thermal conductivity of a granular superconductor: Giant field-induced effects predicted

The temperature and electric field dependence of electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity (TC) of a granular superconductor is considered within a 3D model of inductive Josephson junction arrays. In addition to a low-temperature maximum of zero-field TC K(T,0) (controlled by mutual inductance L_0 and normal state resistivity R_n), the model predicts two major effects in applied electric field: (i) decrease of the linear TC, and (ii) giant enhancement of the nonlinear (i.e., grad T-dependent) TC with [K(T,E)-K(T,0)]/K(T,0) reaching 500% for parallel electric fields E=E_T (E_T=S_0|grad T| is an "intrinsic" thermoelectric field). A possiblity of experimental observation of the predicted effects in granular superconductors is discussed.Comment: 5 LaTeX pages (jetpl.sty included), 2 EPS figures. To be published in JETP Letter

Разработка способов десульфуризации трансформаторных масел

We report on combined dc and microwave electronic measurements of magnetic flux transport in micron and submicron-patterned high-T-c films. In a given temperature regime below the superconducting transition temperature T-c, the current-driven flux transport is restricted to flux motion guided by the submicron patterns. Via frequency-dependent measurements of the forward transmission coefficient S-21 it is demonstrated that the mechanism of the guided flux transport depends on the microwave frequency and the geometrical size of the superconducting structures. At low frequencies, flux is transported via Abrikosov vortices leading to additional microwave losses. Above a geometrically defined frequency, a different mechanism seems to be responsible for flux transport that does not contribute to the microwave losses and most likely represents a phase-slip type mechanism. The limiting vortex velocity obtained from the frequency dependence of the microwave properties agrees with the Larking-Ovchinnikov critical vortex velocity that is determined via dc pulse measurements. In spite of the change of mechanism, guidance of flux persists in these nanopatterns up to high frequencies of several GHz

General Relativistic Thermoelectric Effects in Superconductors

We discuss the general-relativistic contributions to occur in the electromagnetic properties of a superconductor with a heat flow. The appearance of general-relativistic contribution to the magnetic flux through a superconducting thermoelectric bimetallic circuit is shown. A response of the Josephson junctions to a heat flow is investigated in the general-relativistic framework. Some gravitothermoelectric effects which are observable in the superconducting state in the Earth's gravitational field are considered.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Effect of repetitive transmitter signals on SQUID response

Results of SQUID application in geophysical time domain transient electromagnetic (TEM) measurements are presented, We analyze peculiarities of SQUID TEM recordings, comparing them to data of commonly used induction coil. Two significant effects have been observed with the SQUID TEM system which are less pronounced or not observed in corresponding reference coil data, We consider a model for SQUID TEM measurements, taking into account the effect of repetitive transmitter signals which gives a possible explanation for these effects