Compensation-driven superconductor-insulator transition

Compensation-driven superconductor-insulator transition

The superconductor-insulator transition in the presence of strong compensation of dopants was recently realized in La doped yttrium barium copper oxide. The compensation of acceptors by donors makes it possible to change independently the concentration of holes n and the total concentration of charged impurities N. We propose a theory of the superconductor-insulator phase diagram in the N ,n pl...

The Superconductor Insulator Transition

As the thickness or magnetic field is varied in thin films a transition between superconducting and insulating phases takes place. This quantum phase transition obeys scaling relations and occurs at seemingly universal critical resistance. This paper reviews experiments that demonstrate this transition and measure the critical exponents. The microscopic theories are outlined and lead to differe...

Magnetic-Field-Driven Superconductor-Insulator-Type Transition in Graphite

A magnetic-field-driven transition from metallicto semiconducting-type behavior in the basal-plane resistance takes place in highly oriented pyrolytic graphite at a field Hc ∼ 1 kOe applied along the hexagonal c-axis. The analysis of the data reveals a striking similarity between this transition and that measured in thinfilm superconductors and Si MOSFET’s. However, in contrast to those materia...

Sharp superconductor-insulator transition in short wires.

Recent experiments on short MoGe nanowires show a sharp superconducting-insulating transition at the universal resistance R(Q)=h/(4e(2)), contrary to the expectation of a smooth temperature dependence of the resistance for such Josephson-like systems. We present a self-consistent renormalization-group treatment of interacting quantum phase slips in short superconducting wires, which reproduces ...

Spin Effects Near the Superconductor-Insulator Transition