Louisiana State University Physics & Astronomy

"Strands of Superconductivity at the Nanoscale"

Paul M. Goldbart
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Superconducting circuitry can now be fabricated at the nanoscale by depositing suitable materials on to individual molecules, such as DNA or carbon nanotubes. In this talk I shall examine various themes that arise when superconductivity is explored in this new regime, including thermal barrier crossing and quantum tunneling by the superconducting condensate, as well as the impact of magnetism on nanosuperconductivity. I shall focus on a fascinating class of circuits: nanoscale superconducting quantum interference devices (or n-SQUIDs). After describing how they are made, I shall pay particular attention to the electrical resistance of these devices and, especially, its sensitivity to magnetic fields and patterns of supercurrent. These features hint at possible uses of n-SQUIDs, such as for maping the quantum phase of superconducting order and testing for superconducting correlations in novel materials and settings.

Updated: Wed, 19-Mar-2008 1:47 PM