Higgs-mode-induced instability and kinetic inductance in strongly dc-biased dirty-limit superconductors

Abstract

A perturbative ac field superposed on a dc bias (Jb) is known to excite the Higgs mode in superconductors. The dirty limit, where disorder enhances the Higgs resonance, provides an ideal setting for this study and is also relevant to many superconducting devices operating under strong dc biases. However, the effects of a strong dc bias near the depairing current in dirty-limit superconductors remain largely unexplored, despite their significance in both fundamental physics and applications. In this paper, we derive a general formula for the complex conductivity of disordered superconductors under an arbitrary dc bias using the Keldysh-Usadel theory of nonequilibrium superconductivity. This formula is relatively simple, making it more accessible to a broader research community. Our analysis reveals that in a strongly dc-biased dirty-limit superconductor, the Higgs mode induces an instability in the homogeneous superflow within a specific frequency window, making the high-current-carrying state vulnerable to ac perturbations. This instability, which occurs exclusively in the ac∥dc configuration, leads to a nonmonotonic dependence of kinetic inductance on frequency and bias strength. By carefully tuning the dc bias and the frequency of the ac perturbation, the kinetic inductance can be enhanced by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. In the weak-dc-bias regime, our formula recovers the well-known quadratic dependence, Lk∝1+C(Jb/Jdp)2, with coefficients C=0.409 for ac∥dc and C=0.136 for ac⊥dc, where Jdp is the equilibrium depairing current density. These findings establish a robust theoretical framework for dc-biased superconducting systems and suggest that Higgs-mode physics could be exploited in the design and optimization of superconducting detectors. Moreover, they may lead to a yet-to-be-explored detector concept based on Higgs-mode physics.

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