Current Dissipation in Thin Superconducting Wires: Accurate Numerical Evaluation Using the String Method

TL;DR

This paper introduces a numerical approach using the string method to accurately evaluate current dissipation pathways and transition rates in thin superconducting wires within the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau framework.

Contribution

It develops a novel numerical algorithm to identify the most probable transition pathways and accurately compute transition rate prefactors in superconducting wires.

Findings

Identified the transition pathway linking metastable states.

Developed an accurate algorithm for rate prefactor evaluation.

Numerical results improve understanding of dissipation mechanisms.

Abstract

Current dissipation in thin superconducting wires is numerically evaluated by using the string method, within the framework of time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation with a Langevin noise term. The most probable transition pathway between two neighboring current-carrying metastable states, continuously linking the Langer-Ambegaokar saddle-point state to a state in which the order parameter vanishes somewhere, is found numerically. We also give a numerically accurate algorithm to evaluate the prefactors for the rate of current-reducing transitions.