Nonequilibrium transport in superconducting tunneling structures.

Journal Article · Wed Dec 01 04:00:00 UTC 2010 · Physica C

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physc.2009.11.008· OSTI ID:1008282

Chtchelkatchev, N M; Vinokur, V M; Baturina, T I ^[1]

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1. Materials Science Division

We derive the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of far from equilibrium superconducting tunneling arrays and find that the energy relaxation ensuring the charge transfer occurs in two stages: (i) the energy exchange between charge carriers and the intermediate bosonic agent, environment, and (ii) relaxing the energy further to the (phonon) thermostat, the bath, provided the rate of the environmental modes-phonon interactions is slower than their energy exchange rate with the tunneling junction. For a single junction we find I {proportional_to} (V/R)ln({Lambda}/V), where R is the bare tunnel resistance of the junction and {Lambda} is the high energy cut-off of the electron-environment interaction. In large tunneling arrays comprised of macroscopic number of junctions, low-temperature transport is governed by the cotunneling processes losing energy to the electron-hole environment. Below some critical temperature, T*, the Coulomb interactions open a finite gap in the environment excitations spectrum blocking simultaneously Cooper pair and normal excitations currents through the array; this is the microscopic mechanism of the insulator-to-superinsulator transition.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: SC; Russian Academy of Sciences
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1008282
• Report Number(s): ANL/MSD/JA-65640
• Journal Information: Physica C, Journal Name: Physica C Journal Issue: 1 ; Dec. 2010 Vol. 470; ISSN 0921-4534
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: ENGLISH

Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
CHARGE CARRIERS
COOPER PAIRS
CRITICAL TEMPERATURE
ENERGY TRANSFER
RELAXATION
TRANSPORT
TUNNELING