Abstract
The properties of one-dimensional superconductors are strongly influenced by topological fluctuations of the order parameter, known as phase slips, which cause the decay of persistent current in superconducting rings and the appearance of resistance in superconducting wires. Despite extensive work, quantitative studies of phase slips have been limited by uncertainty regarding the order parameter's free-energy landscape. Here we show detailed agreement between measurements of the persistent current in isolated flux-biased rings and Ginzburg–Landau theory over a wide range of temperature, magnetic field and ring size; this agreement provides a quantitative picture of the free-energy landscape. We also demonstrate that phase slips occur deterministically as the barrier separating two competing order parameter configurations vanishes. These results will enable studies of quantum and thermal phase slips in a well-characterized system and will provide access to outstanding questions regarding the nature of one-dimensional superconductivity.
Highlights
The properties of one-dimensional superconductors are strongly influenced by topological fluctuations of the order parameter, known as phase slips, which cause the decay of persistent current in superconducting rings and the appearance of resistance in superconducting wires
Tuning the free-energy barrier between the states to zero with the applied flux F will result in a deterministic phase slip from the state that has become unstable[6], whereas tuning the barrier to a small but non-zero value will lead to a stochastic phase slip via thermal activation[2,3] or quantum tunnelling[7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]
We find that the dynamics of the phase slips is strongly damped, so that the disappearance of a barrier leads the system to relax to the adjacent local minimum
Summary
The properties of one-dimensional superconductors are strongly influenced by topological fluctuations of the order parameter, known as phase slips, which cause the decay of persistent current in superconducting rings and the appearance of resistance in superconducting wires. The interpretation of measurements of stochastic phase slips[7,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25] has been complicated by these processes’ strong dependence on the system’s details, such as the form of the free-energy landscape, the damping of the order parameter and the noise driving its fluctuations.
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