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

Tuning the transition temperature of superconducting Ag/Pb films via the proximity effect

We report measurements of the transition temperature (TC) of superconducting films composed of various combinations of Ag and Pb layers. For samples with good electrical contact between the layers, the measured TC values show reasonable agreement with the Cooper model of the proximity effect. In poorly coupled samples, the normal layers appear to cause little if any suppression of the TC. We present a simple predictive expression for TC as a function of Ag content

Superconductor-insulator transition in granular Pb films near a superconducting ground plane

We report observations of the zero-field superconductor-insulator transition in granular quench-condensed Pb for samples within 10-15 nm of relatively thick superconducting ground planes. Resistance vs temperature measurements of sufficiently thick Pb samples exhibit broadened superconductor transitions consistent with previous results on clean dielectric substrates. The lack of any measurable influence by the superconducting planes on the Pb film resistance is discussed within the context of zero-field vortex-antivortex unbinding explanations for the transition broadening

Improving SIEM for critical SCADA water infrastructures using machine learning

Network Control Systems (NAC) have been used in many industrial processes. They aim to reduce the human factor burden and efficiently handle the complex process and communication of those systems. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are used in industrial, infrastructure and facility processes (e.g. manufacturing, fabrication, oil and water pipelines, building ventilation, etc.) Like other Internet of Things (IoT) implementations, SCADA systems are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, therefore, a robust anomaly detection is a major requirement. However, having an accurate anomaly detection system is not an easy task, due to the difficulty to differentiate between cyber-attacks and system internal failures (e.g. hardware failures). In this paper, we present a model that detects anomaly events in a water system controlled by SCADA. Six Machine Learning techniques have been used in building and evaluating the model. The model classifies different anomaly events including hardware failures (e.g. sensor failures), sabotage and cyber-attacks (e.g. DoS and Spoofing). Unlike other detection systems, our proposed work helps in accelerating the mitigation process by notifying the operator with additional information when an anomaly occurs. This additional information includes the probability and confidence level of event(s) occurring. The model is trained and tested using a real-world dataset

Casimir Energy for a Spherical Cavity in a Dielectric: Applications to Sonoluminescence

In the final few years of his life, Julian Schwinger proposed that the ``dynamical Casimir effect'' might provide the driving force behind the puzzling phenomenon of sonoluminescence. Motivated by that exciting suggestion, we have computed the static Casimir energy of a spherical cavity in an otherwise uniform material. As expected the result is divergent; yet a plausible finite answer is extracted, in the leading uniform asymptotic approximation. This result agrees with that found using zeta-function regularization. Numerically, we find far too small an energy to account for the large burst of photons seen in sonoluminescence. If the divergent result is retained, it is of the wrong sign to drive the effect. Dispersion does not resolve this contradiction. In the static approximation, the Fresnel drag term is zero; on the mother hand, electrostriction could be comparable to the Casimir term. It is argued that this adiabatic approximation to the dynamical Casimir effect should be quite accurate.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, REVTe

Scanning Josephson Tunneling Microscopy of Single Crystal Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta with a Conventional Superconducting Tip

We have performed both Josephson and quasiparticle tunneling in vacuum tunnel junctions formed between a conventional superconducting scanning tunneling microscope tip and overdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+ single crystals. A Josephson current is observed with a peak centered at a small finite voltage due to the thermal-fluctuation-dominated superconducting phase dynamics. Josephson measurements at different surface locations yield local values for the Josephson ICRN product. Corresponding energy gap measurements were also performed and a surprising inverse correlation was observed between the local ICRN product and the local energy gap

Anisotropic Magnetoconductance in Quench-Condensed Ultrathin Beryllium Films

Near the superconductor-insulator (S-I) transition, quench-condensed ultrathin Be films show a large magnetoconductance which is highly anisotropic in the direction of the applied field. Film conductance can drop as much as seven orders of magnitude in a weak perpendicular field (< 1 T), but is insensitive to a parallel field in the same field range. We believe that this negative magnetoconductance is due to the field de-phasing of the superconducting pair wavefunction. This idea enables us to extract the finite superconducting phase coherence length in nearly superconducting films. Our data indicate that this local phase coherence persists even in highly insulating films in the vicinity of the S-I transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure RevTex, Typos Correcte

Ising spin glass under continuous-distribution random magnetic fields: Tricritical points and instability lines

The effects of random magnetic fields are considered in an Ising spin-glass model defined in the limit of infinite-range interactions. The probability distribution for the random magnetic fields is a double Gaussian, which consists of two Gaussian distributions centered respectively, at $+H_{0}$ and $-H_{0}$, presenting the same width $\sigma$. It is argued that such a distribution is more appropriate for a theoretical description of real systems than its simpler particular two well-known limits, namely the single Gaussian distribution ($\sigma \gg H_{0}$), and the bimodal one ($\sigma = 0$). The model is investigated by means of the replica method, and phase diagrams are obtained within the replica-symmetric solution. Critical frontiers exhibiting tricritical points occur for different values of $\sigma$, with the possibility of two tricritical points along the same critical frontier. To our knowledge, it is the first time that such a behavior is verified for a spin-glass model in the presence of a continuous-distribution random field, which represents a typical situation of a real system. The stability of the replica-symmetric solution is analyzed, and the usual Almeida-Thouless instability is verified for low temperatures. It is verified that, the higher-temperature tricritical point always appears in the region of stability of the replica-symmetric solution; a condition involving the parameters $H_{0}$ and $\sigma$, for the occurrence of this tricritical point only, is obtained analytically. Some of our results are discussed in view of experimental measurements available in the literature.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, accept for publication in Phys. Rev.