Related papers: Transport and Magnetism in Mesoscopic Superconduct…
Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Kamerlingh Onnes and Holst in mercury at the temperature of liquid helium (4.2 K). It took almost 50 years until in 1957 a microscopic theory of superconductivity, the so-called BCS theory, was…
An arrangement of mesoscopic experiments is considered when the conductance of a mesoscopic normal metal sample is governed not only by the magnetic flux threading the sample but by the supercurrent inside the superconductor coupled to the…
The discovery of the Meissner effect was a turning point in the history of superconductivity. It demonstrated that superconductivity is an equilibrium state of matter, thus allowing to use thermodynamics for its study. This provided a…
Superconductivity had been one of the most enigmatic phenomena in condensed matter physics, puzzling the best theorists for 45 years, since the original discovery by Kamerlingh-Onnes in 1911 till the final solution by Bardeen, Cooper and…
The exchange interaction at interfaces between superconductors (SCs) and ferromagnets (FMs) has been a central topic in condensed matter physics for many decades, starting with the prediction of exotic phases such as the…
We have measured the electrical transport of submicron ferromagnets (Ni) in contact with a mesoscopic superconductor (Al) for a range of interface resistances. In the geometry measured, the interface and the ferromagnet are measured…
Proximity phenomena and induced superconducting correlations in heterostructures are shown to be strongly affected by the nonlocal nature of the electronic attraction. The latter can trigger the formation of Cooper pairs consisting of…
The new family of unconventional iron-based superconductors discovered in 2006 immediately relieved their copper-based high-temperature predecessors as the most actively studied superconducting compounds in the world. The experimental and…
We study the conductance of a junction between the normal and superconducting segments of a nanowire, both of which are subjected to spin-orbit coupling and an external magnetic field. We directly compare the transport properties of the…
Emerging in the 1950s, the multiband superconductivity has been considered for a long time as an approximate model in the form of a generalization of the BCS theory to the case of two bands for a more accurate quantitative description of…
We review the mesoscopic transport in a diffusive proximity superconductor made of a normal metal (N) in metallic contact with a superconductor (S). The Andreev reflection of electrons on the N-S interface is responsible for the diffusion…
When first proposed in 1957, the BCS theory for superconductivity, which explained the quasi-totality of its thermodynamic and transport properties, was greeted with great circumspection, before it became the play ground of particle…
The Meissner effect, the expulsion of magnetic field from the interior of a metal entering the superconducting state, is arguably the most fundamental property of superconductors, discovered in 1933. The conventional theory of…
We review transport measurements in a normal metal (N) in contact with one or two superconducting (S) islands. From the experiment, we distinguish the Josephson coupling, the mesoscopic fluctuations and the proximity effect. In a…
Since its discovery more than a century ago, superconductivity has been at the epicentre of condensed matter physics research. The electron phonon coupling in conventional superconductors, which obeys BCS theory, causes an attractive…
The intimate connection between magnetism and superconducting pairing routinely plays a central role in determining the occurrence of unconventional superconducting states. In high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) stripe-ordered cuprate…
Thermodynamic and transport properties of mesoscopic conductors are strongly influenced by the proximity of a superconductor: An interplay between the large scale quantum coherent wave functions in the normal mesoscopic and the…
The magnetic coupling between two concentric mesoscopic superconductors with non-zero thickness is studied using the nonlinear Ginzburg-Landau theory. We calculated the free energy, the expelled field, the total field profile, the…
We review our experiments on the electronic transport properties of atomic contacts between metallic electrodes, in particular superconducting ones. Despite ignorance of the exact atomic configuration, these ultimate quantum point contacts…
The search for new superconducting materials approaching room temperature benefits from having a variety of testing methodologies to confirm and characterize the presence of superconductivity. Often the first signatures of new…