Thermally activated phase slips in superconducting nanowires

Dmitri S. Golubev; Andrei D. Zaikin

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.78.144502

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Thermally activated phase slips in superconducting nanowires

Dmitri S. Golubev, Andrei D. Zaikin

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.78.144502 · Physical Review B

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Abstract

We reanalyze the problem of thermally activated phase slips (TAPS) which can dominate the behavior of sufficiently thin superconducting wires at temperatures close to TC. With the aid of an effective action approach we evaluate the TAPS rate which turns out to exceed the rate found by McCumber and Halperin, Phys. Rev. B 1, 1054 (1970) within the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau analysis by the factor ∼(1−T/TC)−1⪢1. Additional differences in the results of these two approaches arise at bias currents close to the Ginzburg-Landau critical current where the TAPS rate becomes bigger. We also derive a simple formula for the voltage noise across the superconducting wire in terms of the TAPS rate. Our results can be verified in modern experiments with superconducting nanowires.