Dissipative phase fluctuations in superconducting wires capacitively coupled to diffusive metals

Abstract

We study the screening of the Coulomb interaction in a quasi-one-dimensional superconductor by the presence of either a one- or a two-dimensional electron gas nearby. To that end, we derive an effective low-energy phase-only action, which amounts to treating the Coulomb and superconducting correlations in the random-phase approximation. We concentrate on the study of dissipation effects in the superconductor, induced by the effect of Coulomb coupling to the diffusive modes in the electron gas, and study its consequences on the behavior of the one-dimensional plasma mode, and the static and dynamical conductivity. Our results point toward the importance of the dimensionality of the screening metal in the behavior of the superconducting plasma mode of the wire at low energies. In absence of topological defects, and when the screening is given by a one-dimensional electron gas, the superconducting plasma mode is completely damped in the limit k→0, and consequently superconductivity is lost in the wire. In contrast, we recover a Drude-type response in the conductivity when the screening is provided by a two-dimensional electron gas.

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