Persistent Current in Small Superconducting Rings

Georg Schwiete; Yuval Oreg

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.037001

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Persistent Current in Small Superconducting Rings

Georg Schwiete, Yuval Oreg

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.037001 · Physical Review Letters

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Abstract

We study theoretically the contribution of fluctuating Cooper pairs to the persistent current in superconducting rings threaded by a magnetic flux. For sufficiently small rings, in which the coherence length ξ exceeds the radius R, mean field theory predicts a full reduction of the transition temperature to zero near half-integer flux. We find that nevertheless a very large current is expected to persist in the ring as a consequence of Cooper pair fluctuations that do not condense. For larger rings with R≫ξ, we calculate analytically the susceptibility in the critical region of strong fluctuations and show that it reflects competition of two interacting complex order parameters.