Effect of dimensionality on the vortex-dynamics in type-II superconductor

TL;DR

This study investigates how the dimensionality of NbN superconductors affects vortex pinning and dynamics, revealing significant differences in phase diagrams, pinning strength, and fluctuation behavior between 2D and 3D samples.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative comparison of vortex pinning properties and fluctuation mechanisms in 2D and 3D NbN superconductors, highlighting the impact of dimensionality on vortex dynamics.

Findings

3D NbN has stronger pinning potential than 2D NbN.

Vortex pinning-depinning mechanisms are similar in 2D and 3D.

Voltage fluctuations are correlated only in 2D NbN due to BKT fluctuations.

Abstract

We explore the effects of sample dimensionality on vortex pinning in a type-II, low-$T_C$, s-wave superconductor, NbN, in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field, $H$. We find significant differences in the phase diagrams in the magnetic field--temperature plane between 3-dimensional (3D) and 2-dimensional (2D) NbN films. The differences are most striking close to the normal-superconductor phase transition. We establish that these variances have their origin in the differing pinning properties in two different dimensions. We obtain the pinning strength quantitatively in both the dimensions from two independent transport measurements performed in two different regimes of vortex-motion -- (i) thermally assisted flux-flow (TAFF) regime and (ii) flux flow (FF) regime. Both the measurements consistently show that both the pinning potential and the zero-field free-energy barrier to depinning in the 3D superconductor are at least an order of magnitude stronger than that in the 2D superconductor. Further, we probed the dynamics of pinning in both 2D and 3D superconductor through voltage fluctuation spectroscopy. We find that the mechanism of vortex pinning-depinning is qualitatively similar for the 3D and 2D superconductors. The voltage-fluctuations arising from vortex-motion are found to be correlated only in the 2D superconductor. We establish this to be due to the presence of long-range phase fluctuations near the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) type superconducting transition in 2-dimensional superconductors.