Non-equilibrium quasiparticles in superconducting aluminium

Orateur : Jukka PEKOLA (Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland and Nanoscience Foundation, Grenoble)

Ideally a BCS superconductor has an exponentially low density of quasiparticles (QPs) at temperatures far below the superconducting transition. In mesoscopic devices this would correspond to no QPs at the temperatures they are routinely operated at. Yet this is not the case in practise. In this talk I present the experimental status of QPs in superconducting aluminium, both under quiescent and driven conditions. I present possible origins of QPs, and ways to avoid them. In particular, I present our recent experiments on trapping QPs in the Meissner state and into single vortices by applying a small magnetic field. I discuss the contributions of non-equilibrium QPs on the performance of a few low temperature superconducting devices.

Télécharger dans mon agenda