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L. N. Bulaevskii

Publications and source records attributed to L. N. Bulaevskii.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Dissipation in Josephson tunneling junctions at low temperatures

It is important to know the decoherence mechanism of a qubit based on Josephson junctions. At low temperatures, as quasiparticle concentration becomes exponentially small, one needs to consider energy transfer from tunneling electrons to other degrees of freedom to find dissipation in Josephson junctions and decoherence in qubits. Here we discuss the energy transfer to two-level systems, i.e. the transitions between two different configurations of ions inside insulating layer separated by a potential barrier. We derive a general equation of motion for the phase difference between two superconducting electrodes and we find a retarded dissipation term due to electromagnetic mechanism and also contribution due to electron tunneling mechanism. Using the equation of motion we calculate the decay of Rabi oscillations and frequency shift in qubits due to the presence of the two-level systems. In the long time limit our results coincide with those obtained by Martinis et al. [J. M. Martinis et al.. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 210503 (2005)] within the Fermi's Golden rule approach up to a numerical factor.

cond-mat.supr-con

Vortex-induced dissipation in narrow current-biased thin-film superconducting strips

A vortex crossing a thin-film superconducting strip from one edge to the other, perpendicular to the bias current, is the dominant mechanism of dissipation for films of thickness d on the order of the coherence length XI; and of width w much narrower than the Pearl length LAMBDA >> w >> XI. At high bias currents, I* < I < Ic, the heat released by the crossing of a single vortex suffices to create a belt-like normal-state region across the strip, resulting in a detectable voltage pulse. Here Ic is the critical current at which the energy barrier vanishes for a single vortex crossing. The belt forms along the vortex path and causes a transition of the entire strip into the normal state. We estimate I* to be roughly Ic/3. Further, we argue that such "hot" vortex crossings are the origin of dark counts in photon detectors, which operate in the regime of metastable superconductivity at currents between I* and Ic. We estimate the rate of vortex crossings and compare it with recent experimental data for dark counts. For currents below I*, i.e., in the stable superconducting but resistive regime, we estimate the amplitude and duration of voltage pulses induced by a single vortex crossing.

cond-mat.supr-con

Vortex Viscosity in Magnetic Superconductors Due to Radiation of Spin Waves

In type-II superconductors that contain a lattice of magnetic moments, vortices polarize the magnetic system inducing additional contributions to the vortex mass, vortex viscosity, and vortex-vortex interaction. Extra magnetic viscosity is caused by radiation of spin waves by a moving vortex. Like in the case of Cherenkov radiation, this effect has a characteristic threshold behavior and the resulting vortex viscosity may be comparable to the well-known Bardeen-Stephen contribution. The threshold behavior leads to an anomaly in the current-voltage characteristics, and a drop in dissipation for a current interval that is determined by the magnetic excitation spectrum.

cond-mat.supr-con

Shunt-capacitor-assisted synchronization of oscillations in intrinsic Josephson junctions stack

We show that shunt capacitor stabilizes synchronized oscillations in intrinsic Josephson junction stacks biased by DC current. This synchronization mechanism has an effect similar to the previously discussed radiative coupling between junctions, however, it is not defined by the geometry of the stack. It is particularly important in crystals with smaller number of junctions, where radiation coupling is week, and is comparable with the effect of strong super-radiation in crystal with many junctions. The shunt also helps to enter the phase-locked regime in the beginning of oscillations, after switching on the bias current. Shunt may be used to tune radiation power, which drops as shunt capacitance increases.

cond-mat.supr-con

Field Induced Orbital Antiferromagnetism in Mott Insulators

We report on a new electromagnetic phenomenon that emerges in Mott insulators, i.e., materials that do not conduct electricity because of strong electronic Coulomb repulsion. The phenomenon manifests as antiferromagnetic ordering due to orbital electric currents which are spontaneously generated from the coupling between spin currents and an external homogenous magnetic field. This novel spin-charge current effect provides the mechanism to detect the so far elusive spin currents by means of unpolarized neutron scattering, nuclear magnetic resonance or muon spectroscopy. We illustrate this mechanism by solving a half-filled Hubbard model on a frustrated ladder, a simple but nontrivial case of strongly interacting electrons.

cond-mat.str-el

Resonant electromagnetic emission from intrinsic Josephson-junction stacks with laterally modulated Josephson critical current

Intrinsic Josephson-junction stacks realized in mesas fabricated out of high-temperature superconductors may be used as sources of coherent electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz range. The major challenge is to synchronize Josephson oscillations in all junctions in the stack to get significant radiation out of the crystal edge parallel to the c axis. We suggest a simple way to solve this problem via artificially prepared lateral modulation of the Josephson critical current identical in all junctions. In such a stack phase oscillations excite the in-phase Fiske mode when the Josephson frequency matches the Fiske-resonance frequency which is set by the stack lateral size. The powerful almost standing electromagnetic wave is excited inside the crystal in the resonance. This wave is homogeneous across the layers meaning that the oscillations are synchronized in all junctions in the stack. We evaluate behavior of the I-V characteristics and radiated power near the resonance for arbitrary modulation and find exact solutions for several special cases corresponding to symmetric and asymmetric modulations of the critical current.

cond-mat.supr-con

Electronic Orbital Currents and Polarization in Mott Insulators

The standard view is that at low energies Mott insulators exhibit only magnetic properties while charge degrees of freedom are frozen out as the electrons become localized by a strong Coulomb repulsion. We demonstrate that this is in general not true: for certain spin textures {\it spontaneous circular electric currents} or {\it nonuniform charge distribution} exist in the ground state of Mott insulators. In addition, low-energy ``magnetic'' states contribute comparably to the dielectric and magnetic functions $ε_{ik}(ω)$ and $μ_{ik}(ω)$ leading to interesting phenomena such as rotation the electric field polarization and resonances which may be common for both functions producing a negative refraction index in a window of frequencies.

cond-mat.str-el

Radiation Due to Josephson Oscillations in Layered Superconductors

We derive the power of direct radiation into free space induced by Josephson oscillations in intrinsic Josephson junctions of highly anisotropic layered superconductors. We consider the super-radiation regime for a crystal cut in the form of a thin slice parallel to the c-axis. We find that the radiation correction to the current-voltage characteristic in this regime depends only on crystal shape. We show that at large enough number of junctions oscillations are synchronized providing high radiation power and efficiency in the THz frequency range. We discuss crystal parameters and bias current optimal for radiation power and crystal cooling.

cond-mat.supr-con

Electromagnetic radiation from vortex flow in type-II superconductors

We show that a moving vortex lattice, as it comes to a crystal edge, radiates into a free space the harmonics of the washboard frequency, $ω_0=2πv/a$, up to a superconducting gap, $Δ/\hbar$. Here $v$ is the velocity of the vortex lattice and $a$ is the intervortex spacing. We compute radiation power and show that this effect can be used for generation of terahertz radiation and for characterization of moving vortex lattices.

cond-mat.supr-con

Radiation From Flux Flow In Josephson Junction Structures

We derive the radiation power from a single Josephson junction (JJ) and from layered superconductors in the flux-flow regime. For the JJ case we formulate the boundary conditions for the electric and magnetic fields at the edges of the superconducting leads using the Maxwell equations in the dielectric media and find dynamic boundary conditions for the phase difference in JJ which account for the radiation. In a finite-length JJ the power conversion efficiency is determined by the dissipation inside JJ and it tends to unity as dissipation vanishes independently of mismatch of the junction and dielectric media impedances. We formulate also the dynamic boundary conditions for the phase difference in intrinsic Josephson junctions in layered high-temperature superconductors at the boundary with free space. Using these boundary conditions, we find the dynamic phase difference in the linear regime for rectangular and triangular lattices of Josephson vortices and evaluate radiation into a free space for these simple cases.

cond-mat.supr-con

Magnetic Excitations of the 2-D Sm Spin Layers in Sm(La,Sr)CuO4

We present specific heat and susceptibility data on Sm(La,Sr)CuO4 in magnetic fields up to 9 T and temperatures down to 100 mK. We find a broad peak in specific heat which is insensitive to magnetic field at a temperature of 1.5 K with a value of 2.65 J/mol K. The magnetic susceptibility at 5 T continues to increase down to 2 K, the lowest temperature measured. The data suggest that the Sm spin system may be an ideal realization of the frustrated Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the square lattice.

cond-mat.str-el

Spectroscopy of Magnetic Excitations in Magnetic Superconductors Using Vortex Motion

In magnetic superconductors a moving vortex lattice is accompanied by an ac magnetic field which leads to the generation of spin waves. At resonance conditions the dynamics of vortices in magnetic superconductors changes drastically, resulting in strong peaks in the dc I-V characteristics at voltages at which the washboard frequency of vortex lattice matches the spin wave frequency $ω_s({\bf g})$, where ${\bf g}$ are the reciprocal vortex lattice vectors. We show that if washboard frequency lies above the magnetic gap, peaks in the I-V characteristics in borocarbides and cuprate layered magnetic superconductors are strong enough to be observed over the background determined by the quasiparticles.

cond-mat.supr-con

Probing quasiparticle dynamics in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O(8+delta) with a driven Josephson vortex lattice

We show that the flux-flow transport of the Josephson vortex lattice (JVL) in layered high-temperature superconductors provides a convenient probe for both components of quasiparticle conductivity, $σ_{c}$ and $σ_{ab}$. We found that the JVL flux-flow resistivity, $ρ_{ff}$, in a wide range of magnetic fields is mainly determined by the in-plane dissipation. In the dense lattice regime ($B>1$ T) $ρ_{ff}(B)$ dependence is well fitted by the theoretical formula for that limit. That allows us to independently extract from the experimental data the values of $σ_{c}$ and of the ratio $σ_{ab}/(σ_{c}γ^{4})$. The extracted temperature dependence $σ_{ab}(T)$ is consistent with microwave data. The shape of the current-voltage characteristics is also sensitive to the frequency dependence of $σ_{ab}$ and that allows us to estimate the quasiparticle relaxation time and relate it to the impurity bandwidth using data obtained for the same crystal.

cond-mat.supr-con

Tunneling measurement of quantum spin oscillations

We consider the problem of tunneling between two leads via a localized spin 1/2 or any other microscopic system which can be modeled by a two-level Hamiltonian. We assume that a constant magnetic field ${\bf B}_0$ acts on the spin, that electrons in the leads are in the thermal equilibrium and that the tunneling electrons are coupled to the spin through exchange and spin-orbit interactions. Using the non-equilibrium Keldysh formalism we find the dependence of the spin-spin and current-current correlation functions on the applied voltage between leads $V$, temperature $T$, ${\bf B}_0$, and on the degree and orientation ${\bf m}_α$ of spin polarization of the electrons in the right ($α=$R) and left ($α=$L) leads. We compare our results of a full quantum-mechanical treatment of the tunneling-via-spin model with those previously obtained in the quasi-classical approach, and discuss the experimental results observed using STM dynamic probes of the localized spin.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Electronic compressibility and charge imbalance relaxation in cuprate superconductors

In the material SmLa$_{1-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_{4-δ}$ with alternating intrinsic Josephson junctions we explain theoretically the relative amplitude of the two plasma peaks in transmission by taking into account the spatial dispersion of the Josephson Plasma Resonance in $c$ direction due to charge coupling. From this and the magnetic field dependence of the plasma peaks in the vortex solid and liquid states it is shown that the electronic compressibility of the CuO$_2$ layers is consistent with a free electron value. Also the London penetration depth $λ_{ab} \approx 1100 {\rm Å}$ near $T_c$ can be determined. The voltage response in the $IV$-curve of a Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$ mesa due to microwave irradiation or current injection in a second mesa is related to the nonequilibrium charge imbalance of quasiparticles and Cooper pairs and from our experimental data the relaxation time $\sim 100 {\rm ps}$ is obtained.

cond-mat.supr-con

Field Dependence of the Josephson Plasma Resonance in Layered Superconductors with Alternating Junctions

The Josephson plasma resonance in layered superconductors with alternating critical current densities is investigated in a low perpendicular magnetic field. In the vortex solid phase the current densities and the squared bare plasma frequencies decrease linearly with the magnetic field. Taking into account the coupling due to charge fluctuations on the layers, we extract from recent optical data for SmLa_{1-x} Sr_x CuO_{4-delta} the Josephson penetration length lambda_{ab} approximately 1100 A parallel to the layers at T=10 K.

cond-mat.supr-con

Optical Properties of Layered Superconductors near the Josephson Plasma Resonance

We study the optical properties of crystals with spatial dispersion and show that the usual Fresnel approach becomes invalid near frequencies where the group velocity of the wave packets inside the crystal vanishes. Near these special frequencies the reflectivity depends on the atomic structure of the crystal provided that disorder and dissipation are very low. This is demonstrated explicitly by a detailed study of layered superconductors with identical or two different alternating junctions in the frequency range near the Josephson plasma resonance. Accounting for both inductive and charge coupling of the intrinsic junctions, we show that multiple modes are excited inside the crystal by the incident light, determine their relative amplitude by the microscopic calculation of the additional boundary conditions and finally obtain the reflectivity. Spatial dispersion also provides a novel method to stop light pulses, which has possible applications for quantum information processing and the artificial creation of event horizons in a solid.

cond-mat.supr-con