arXiv subjects

L. B. Ioffe

Publications and source records attributed to L. B. Ioffe.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Non-ergodic delocalized phase in Anderson model on Bethe lattice and regular graph

We develop a novel analytical approach to the problem of single particle localization in infinite dimensional spaces such as Bethe lattice and random regular graphs. The key ingredient of the approach is the notion of the inverted order thermodynamic limit (IOTL) in which the coupling to the environment goes to zero before the system size goes to infinity. Using IOTL and Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) formalism we derive analytical expressions for the fractal dimension D_{1} that distinguishes between the extended ergodic, D_{1}=1, and extended non-ergodic (multifractal), 0<D_{1}<1 states on the Bethe lattice and random regular graphs with the branching number K. We also employ RSB formalism to derive the analytical expression ln(1/S_{typ})~(W_{c}-W)^{-1} for the typical imaginary part of self-energy S_{typ} in the non-ergodic phase close to the Anderson transition in the conventional thermodynamic limit. We prove the existence of an extended non-ergodic phase in a broad range of disorder strength and energy and establish the phase diagrams of the models as a function of disorder and energy. The results of the analytical theory are compared with large-scale population dynamics and with the exact diagonalization of Anderson model on random regular graphs. We discuss the consequences of these results for the many body localization.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Microwave properties of superconductors close to SIT

Strongly disordered pseudogapped superconductors are expected to display arbitrary high values of kinetic inductance close to superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) that makes them attractive for the implementation of dissipationless superinductance. We develop the theory of the collective modes in these superconductors and discuss associated dissipation at microwave frequencies. We obtain the collective mode spectra dependence on the disorder level and conclude that collective modes become relevant source of dissipation and noise in the far vicinity of SIT.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Multifractal states in self-consistent theory of localization: analytical solution

We consider disordered tight-binding models which Green's functions obey the self-consistent cavity equations . Based on these equations and the replica representation, we derive an analytical expression for the fractal dimension D_{1} that distinguishes between the extended ergodic, D_{1}=1, and extended non-ergodic (multifractal), 0<D_{1}<1 states. The latter corresponds to the solution with broken replica symmetry, while the former corresponds to the replica-symmetric solution. We prove the existence of the extended non-ergodic phase in a broad range of disorder strength and energy as well as existence of transition between the two extended phases. The results are applied to the systems with local tree structure (Bethe lattices) and to the systems with infinite connectivity (Rosenzweig-Poter random matrix theory). We obtain the phase diagram in the disorder-energy plain for the Bethe lattice and identify two insulating phases classified by the (one-step) replica symmetry breaking parameter. Finally we express the line of the Anderson localization transition, the stability limit of the non-ergodic extended phase and the line of the first order transitions between the two extended phases in terms of the Lyapunov exponents.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2016

Non-ergodic phases in strongly disordered random regular graphs

We combine numerical diagonalization with a semi-analytical calculations to prove the existence of the intermediate non-ergodic but delocalized phase in the Anderson model on disordered hierarchical lattices. We suggest a new generalized population dynamics that is able to detect the violation of ergodicity of the delocalized states within the Abou-Chakra, Anderson and Thouless recursive scheme. This result is supplemented by statistics of random wave functions extracted from exact diagonalization of the Anderson model on ensemble of disordered Random Regular Graphs (RRG) of N sites with the connectivity K=2. By extrapolation of the results of both approaches to N->infinity we obtain the fractal dimensions D_{1}(W) and D_{2}(W) as well as the population dynamic exponent D(W) with the accuracy sufficient to claim that they are non-trivial in the broad interval of disorder strength W_{E} 10^{5} reveals a singularity in D_{1,2}(W)-dependencies which provides a clear evidence for the first order transition between the two delocalized phases on RRG at W_{E}\approx 10.0. We discuss the implications of these results for quantum and classical non-integrable and many-body systems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2016

Spectroscopic Evidence of the Aharonov-Casher effect in a Cooper Pair Box

We have observed the effect of the Aharonov-Casher (AC) interference on the spectrum of a superconducting system containing a symmetric Cooper pair box (CPB) and a large inductance. By varying the charge $n_{g}$ induced on the CPB island, we observed oscillations of the device spectrum with the period $Δn_{g}=2e$. These oscillations are attributed to the charge-controlled AC interference between the fluxon tunneling processes in the CPB Josephson junctions. Total suppression of the tunneling (complete destructive interference) has been observed for the charge $n_{g}=e(2n+1)$. The CPB in this regime represents the $4π$-periodic Josephson element, which can be used for the development of the parity-protected superconducting qubits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Superfluid density of a pseudogapped superconductor near SIT

We analyze critical behavior of superfluid density $ρ_s$ in strongly disordered superconductors near superconductor-insulator transition and compare it with the behavior of the spectral gap $Δ$ for collective excitations. We show that in contrast to conventional superconductors, the superconductors with preformed pairs display unusual scaling relation $ρ_s \propto Δ^2$ close to superconductor-insulator transition. This relation have been reported in very recent experiments.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2015

Majorana boundary modes in Josephson junctions arrays with gapless bulk excitations

The search for Majorana bound states in solid-state physics has been limited to materials which display a gap in their bulk spectrum. We show that such unpaired states appear in certain quasi-one-dimensional Josephson junctions arrays with gapless bulk excitations. The bulk modes mediate a coupling between Majorana bound states via the Ruderman-Kittel-Yosida-Kasuya mechanism. As a consequence, the lowest energy doublet acquires a finite energy difference. For realistic set of parameters this energy splitting remains much smaller than the energy of the bulk eigenstates even for short chains of length $L \sim 10$.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Non-ergodic metallic and insulating phases of Josephson junction chains

Strictly speaking the laws of the conventional Statistical Physics, based on the Equipartition Postulate and Ergodicity Hypothesis, apply only in the presence of a heat bath. Until recently this restriction was not important for real physical systems: a weak coupling with the bath was believed to be sufficient. However, the progress in both quantum gases and solid state coherent quantum devices demonstrates that the coupling to the bath can be reduced dramatically. To describe such systems properly one should revisit the very foundations of the Statistical Mechanics. We examine this general problem for the case of the Josephson junction chain and show that it displays a novel high temperature non-ergodic phase with finite resistance. With further increase of the temperature the system undergoes a transition to the fully localized state characterized by infinite resistance and exponentially long relaxation.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2013

Coherent Flux Tunneling Through NbN Nanowires

We demonstrate evidence of coherent magnetic flux tunneling through superconducting nanowires patterned in a thin highly disordered NbN film. The phenomenon is revealed as a superposition of flux states in a fully metallic superconducting loop with the nanowire acting as an effective tunnel barrier for the magnetic flux, and reproducibly observed in different wires. The flux superposition achieved in the fully metallic NbN rings proves the universality of the phenomenon previously reported for InOx. We perform microwave spectroscopy and study the tunneling amplitude as a function of the wire width, compare the experimental results with theories, and estimate the parameters for existing theoretical models.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Giant magnetoresistance in the variable range hopping regime

We predict the universal power law dependence of localization length on magnetic field in the strongly localized regime. This effect is due to the orbital quantum interference. Physically, this dependence shows up in an anomalously large negative magnetoresistance in the hopping regime. The reason for the universality is that the problem of the electron tunneling in a random media belongs to the same universality class as directed polymer problem even in the case of wave functions of random sign. We present numerical simulations which prove this conjecture. We discuss the existing experiments that show anomalously large magnetoresistance. We also discuss the role of localized spins in real materials and the spin polarizing effect of magnetic field.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2012

Quantum Superinductor with Tunable Non-Linearity

We report on the realization of a superinductor, a dissipationless element whose microwave impedance greatly exceeds the resistance quantum. The design of the superinductor, implemented as a ladder of nanoscale Josephson junctions, enables tuning of the inductance and its nonlinearity by a weak magnetic field. The Rabi decay time of the superinductor-based qubit exceeds 1 microsecond. The high kinetic inductance and strong nonlinearity offer new types of functionality, including the development of qubits protected from both flux and charge noises, fault tolerant quantum computing, and high-impedance isolation for electrical current standards based on Bloch oscillations.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2012

Coherent quantum phase slip

A hundred years after discovery of superconductivity, one fundamental prediction of the theory, the coherent quantum phase slip (CQPS), has not been observed. CQPS is a phenomenon exactly dual to the Josephson effect: whilst the latter is a coherent transfer of charges between superconducting contacts, the former is a coherent transfer of vortices or fluxes across a superconducting wire. In contrast to previously reported observations of incoherent phase slip, the CQPS has been only a subject of theoretical study. Its experimental demonstration is made difficult by quasiparticle dissipation due to gapless excitations in nanowires or in vortex cores. This difficulty might be overcome by using certain strongly disordered superconductors in the vicinity of the superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). Here we report the first direct observation of the CQPS in a strongly disordered indium-oxide (InOx) superconducting wire inserted in a loop, which is manifested by the superposition of the quantum states with different number of fluxes. Similarly to the Josephson effect, our observation is expected to lead to novel applications in superconducting electronics and quantum metrology.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2011

Magnetic Field Driven Quantum Phase Transitions in Josephson Arrays

We have studied the magnetic-field-driven quantum phase transitions in Josephson junction arrays with a large coordination number. The characteristic energies were extracted in both the superconducting and insulating phases by integrating the current-voltage characteristics over a voltage range 2eV\leqk_B T. For the arrays with a relatively strong Josephson coupling, we observed duality between the energies in the superconducting and insulating phases. The arrays with a weaker Josephson coupling demonstrate an intermediate, "bad metal" regime in weak magnetic fields; this observation underlines the importance of vortex pinning at large scales and, presumably, emergent inhomogeneity in the presence of strong offset charge disorder.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2011

Josephson current in a four terminal superconductor - exciton condensate - superconductor system

We investigate the transport properties of a bilayer exciton condensate that is contacted by four superconducting leads. We focus on the equilibrium regime and investigate how the Josephson currents induced in the bilayer by phase biases applied to the superconducting electrodes are affected by the presence of an exciton condensate in the bulk of the system. As long as the distance between the superconducting electrodes is much larger than the exciton coherence length, the Josephson current depends only on the difference between the phase biases in the two layers. This result holds true in both short- and long-junction limits. We relate it to a novel correlated four-particle Andreev process which occurs at the superconductor - exciton condensate interface. The system we investigate provides an implementation of the supercurrent mirror proposed by Kitaev as a viable way to realize topologically protected qubits.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2011

Fractal spin structures as origin of 1/f magnetic noise in superconducting circuits

We analyze recent data on the complex inductance of dc SQUIDs that show 1/f inductance noise highly correlated with conventional 1/f flux noise. We argue that these data imply a formation of long range order in fractal spin structures. We show that these structures appear naturally in a random system of spins with wide distribution of spin-spin interactions. We perform numerical simulations on the simplest model of this type and show that it exhibits $1/f^{1+ζ}$ magnetization noise with small exponent $ζ$ and reproduces the correlated behavior observed experimentally.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Superconductor-Insulator transition and energy localization

We develop an analytical theory for generic disorder-driven quantum phase transitions. We apply this formalism to the superconductor-insulator transition and we briefly discuss the applications to the order-disorder transition in quantum magnets. The effective spin-1/2 models for these transitions are solved in the cavity approximation which becomes exact on a Bethe lattice with large branching number K >> 1 and weak dimensionless coupling g << 1. The characteristic features of the low temperature phase is a large self-formed inhomogeneity of the order-parameter distribution near the critical point K_{c}(g) where the critical temperature T_{c} of the ordering transition vanishes. Near the quantum critical point, the typical value of the order parameter vanishes exponentially, B_{0}\propto e^{-C/(K-K_{c}(g))}. In the disordered regime, realized at K ω_{d} the level acquire a non-zero width which is self-generated by the many-body interactions. In this phase the spin model provides by itself an intrinsic thermal bath. Another phase is obtained at smaller K<K^{*}(g), where all the eigenstates are discrete, corresponding to full many-body localization. These results provide an explanation for the activated behavior of the resistivity in amorphous materials on the insulating side near the SI transition and a semi-quantitative description of the scanning tunneling data on its superconductive side.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2010

Fractal superconductivity near localization threshold

We develop a semi-quantitative theory of electron pairing and resulting superconductivity in bulk "poor conductors" in which Fermi energy $E_F$ is located in the region of localized states not so far from the Anderson mobility edge $E_c$. We review the existing theories and experimental data and argue that a large class of disordered films is described by this model. Our theoretical analysis is based on the analytical treatment of pairing correlations, described in the basis of the exact single-particle eigenstates of the 3D Anderson model, which we combine with numerical data on eigenfunction correlations. Fractal nature of critical wavefunction's correlations is shown to be crucial for the physics of these systems. We identify three distinct phases: 'critical' superconductive state formed at $E_F=E_c$, superconducting state with a strong pseudogap, realized due to pairing of weakly localized electrons and insulating state realized at $E_F$ still deeper inside localized band. The 'critical' superconducting phase is characterized by the enhancement of the transition temperature with respect to BCS result, by the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of superconductive order parameter and local density of states. The major new feature of the pseudo-gaped state is the presence of two independent energy scales: superconducting gap $Δ$, that is due to many-body correlations and a new "pseudogap" energy scale $Δ_P$ which characterizes typical binding energy of localized electron pairs and leads to the insulating behavior of the resistivity as a function of temperature above superconductive $T_c$. Two gap nature of the "pseudo-gaped superconductor" is shown to lead to a number of unusual physical properties.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2010

Damping in high-frequency metallic nanomechanical resonators

We have studied damping in polycrystalline Al nanomechanical resonators by measuring the temperature dependence of their resonance frequency and quality factor over a temperature range of 0.1 - 4 K. Two regimes are clearly distinguished with a crossover temperature of 1 K. Below 1 K we observe a logarithmic temperature dependence of the frequency and linear dependence of damping that cannot be explained by the existing standard models. We attribute these phenomena to the effect of the two-level systems characterized by the unexpectedly long (at least two orders of magnitude longer) relaxation times and discuss possible microscopic models for such systems. We conclude that the dynamics of the two-level systems is dominated by their interaction with one-dimensional phonon modes of the resonators.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗