Local bistability under microwave heating for spatially mapping disordered superconductors

We theoretically study a strongly disordered superconducting layer heated by near-field microwave radiation from nanometric metallic tip. The microwaves heat up the quasiparticles, which cool phonon emission and conduction away area. Due to bistability with two stable states of electron temperature under tip, heating can be tuned induce submicrometer-sized normal region bounded sharp domain wall between high- low-temperature states. propose this as local probe access different physics existing methods, for example, map out inhomogeneous superfluid flow in layer. bistability-induced significantly improve its spatial resolution.