Coulomb interaction and first order superconductor-insulator transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Coulomb interactions influence the superconductor-insulator transition in Josephson junction arrays, revealing it is inherently a first-order transition with a tricritical point at finite temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge field to account for Coulomb interactions in the Ginzburg-Landau action, showing the transition's first-order nature through RG analysis.

Findings

SIT is always first order in 3D at zero temperature.

A tricritical point exists at finite temperatures separating transition orders.

In 2D, large mutual capacitance also leads to first-order transition.

Abstract

The superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) in regular arrays of Josephson junctions is studied at low temperatures. Near the transition a Ginzburg-Landau type action containing the imaginary time is derived. The new feature of this action is that it contains a gauge field $\Phi $ describing the Coulomb interaction and changing the standard critical behavior. The solution of renormalization group (RG) equations derived at zero temperature $T=0$ in the space dimensionality $d=3$ shows that the SIT is always of the first order. At finite temperatures, a tricritical point separates the lines of the first and second order phase transitions. The same conclusion holds for $d=2$ if the mutual capacitance is larger than the distance between junctions.