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Individual topological tunnelling events of a quantum field probed through their macroscopic consequences

Nature Physics volume 5, pages 503–508 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Phase slips are topological fluctuations that carry the superconducting order-parameter field between distinct current-carrying states. Owing to these phase slips, superconducting nanowires acquire electrical resistance. In such wires, it is well known that at higher temperatures phase slips occur through the process of thermal barrier-crossing by the order-parameter field. At low temperatures, the general expectation is that phase slips should proceed through quantum tunnelling events, which are known as quantum phase slips. However, resistive measurements have produced evidence both for and against the occurrence of quantum phase slips. Here, we report evidence for the observation of individual quantum phase-slip events in homogeneous ultranarrow wires at high bias currents. We accomplish this through measurements of the distribution of switching currents for which the width exhibits a rather counter-intuitive, monotonic increase with decreasing temperature. Importantly, measurements show that in nanowires with larger critical currents, quantum fluctuations dominate thermal fluctuations up to higher temperatures.

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Figure 1: Basic sample characterization at high and low temperatures.
Figure 2: Switching-current distributions at different temperatures.
Figure 3: Measured switching rates from the superconducting state and predictions of the stochastic overheating model.
Figure 4: Stochastic phase slips, switching rates and the quantum behaviour at low temperatures.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported by the US Department of Energy, Division of Materials Sciences under Award No. DE-FG02-07ER46453, through the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. M.-H.B. acknowledges the support of the Korea Research Foundation Grant No. KRF-2006-352-C00020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Mitrabhanu Sahu, Myung-Ho Bae, Andrey Rogachev, David Pekker, Tzu-Chieh Wei, Nayana Shah, Paul M. Goldbart & Alexey Bezryadin

  2. Department of Physics, University of Utah, 115 S 1400 E, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA

    Andrey Rogachev

  3. Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

    David Pekker

  4. Institute for Quantum Computing and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. W., Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada

    Tzu-Chieh Wei

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  1. Mitrabhanu Sahu
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Contributions

M.S. fabricated all of the nanowire samples; M.S., M.-H.B., A.R. and A.B. carried out all of the measurements; M.S., M.-H.B., D.P., N.S., T.-C.W., P.G. and A.B. worked on the theoretical modelling, data analysis and co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mitrabhanu Sahu.

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Sahu, M., Bae, MH., Rogachev, A. et al. Individual topological tunnelling events of a quantum field probed through their macroscopic consequences. Nature Phys 5, 503–508 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1276

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