Enhancement of critical current by microwave irradiation in wide superconducting films

TL;DR

This paper investigates how microwave irradiation enhances the critical current in wide superconducting Sn films, showing that microwave fields stabilize the superconducting state against vortex entry, with effects increasing at higher frequencies.

Contribution

The study extends Eliashberg theory to wide films, demonstrating microwave stabilization of superconductivity and vortex entry suppression in such geometries.

Findings

Microwave irradiation stabilizes the superconducting current state.

The stabilizing effect increases with microwave frequency.

Extension of Eliashberg theory to wide films was achieved.

Abstract

The temperature dependences of the enhanced critical current in wide and thin Sn films exposed to the microwave field have been investigated experimentally and analyzed. It was found that the microwave field stabilizes the current state of a wide film with respect to the entry of Abrikosov vortices. The stabilizing effect of irradiation increases with frequency. Using similarity between the effects of microwave enhancement of superconductivity observed for homogeneous (narrow films) and inhomogeneous (wide films) distributions of the superconducting current over the film width, we have succeeded in partial extension of the Eliashberg theory to the case of wide films.