Role of kinetic inductance in transport properties of shunted superconducting nanowires

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the kinetic inductance of long superconducting nanowires influences their transport properties when shunted, proposing a model that treats the wire as a Josephson junction in series with an inductor, affecting the voltage-current behavior.

Contribution

The study introduces a model incorporating kinetic inductance into the analysis of shunted superconducting nanowires, highlighting its impact on the $V$-$I$ characteristics and switching rates.

Findings

Inductance significantly alters the $V$-$I$ curves.

Inclusion of inductance increases switching rates.

Model can be tested by varying wire length and cross section.

Abstract

Recently transport measurements have been carried out in resistively shunted long superconducting nanowires [M. W. Brenner {\it et. al.}, Phys. Rev. B {\bf{85}}, 224507 (2012)]. The measured voltage-current ($V$-$I$) characteristics was explained by the appearance of the phase slip centers in the shunted wire, and the whole wire was modeled as a single Josephson junction. The kinetic inductance of the long nanowires used in experiments is generally large. Here we argue that the shunted superconducting nanowire acts as a Josephson junction in series with an inductor. The inductance depends on the length and the cross section of the wire. The inclusion of inductance in our analysis modifies the $V$-$I$ curves, and increases the rate of switching from the superconducting state to the resistive state. The quantitative differences can be quite large in some practical parameter sets, and might be important to properly understand the experimental results. Our proposed model can be verified experimentally by studying the shunted superconducting nanowires of different lengths and cross sections.