Phase slips dynamics in gated Ti and V all-metallic supercurrent nano-transistors

Abstract

The effect of electrostatic gating on metallic elemental superconductors was recently demonstrated in terms of modulation of the switching current and control of the current phase relation in superconducting quantum interferometers. The latter suggests the existence of a direct connection between the macroscopic quantum phase (φ) in a superconductor and the applied gate voltage. The measurement of the switching current cumulative probability distributions is a convenient and powerful tool to analyze such relation. In particular, the comparison between the conventional Kurkijärvi–Fulton–Dunkleberger model and the gate-driven distributions give useful insights into the microscopic origin of the gating effect. In this paper, we summarize the main results obtained in the analysis of the phase slip events in elemental gated superconducting weak-links in a wide range of temperatures between 20 mK and 3.5 K. Such a large temperature range demonstrates both that the gating effect is robust as the temperature increases, and that fluctuations induced by the electric field are not negligible in a wide temperature range.