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STM spectroscopy of vortices in atomic monolayers of lead on Si(111)

Dimitri Roditchev

Published Mar 5, 2018• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

In 1964 V. L. Ginzburg predicted that new superconducting phases could appear in ultrathin films deposited on insulating surfaces. In 2010 superconductivity below 2K was discovered in some crystalline atomic monolayers of Pb grown on atomically clean Si(111) [1,2]. In crystalline monolayers of Pb on Si(111) the superconducting condensate is an intrinsic Josephson network formed by superconducting terraces coupled by Josephson links at individual atomic steps [1]. The detailed atomic arrangement at each step decides the strength of the Josephson coupling. In a magnetic field, the superconducting vortex phase contains different kinds of vortices, ranging from Abrikosov to Josephson limits. Amorphous monolayers of Pb are non-superconducting correlated metals. Playing with geometry of in-situ grown samples enables realizing lateral SNS junctions, reveal and study Josephson proximity vortices inside their N-parts [2].When individual magnetic impurities are added, the Cooper pairs are diffused forming so-called Yu, Shiba and Rusinov (YSR) bound states. While in three-dimensional superconductors these states rapidly decay around impurities on atomic scale, superconductors with two-dimensional electronic structure such as Pb-monolayers on Si(111) or 2H-NbSe2 host YSR bound states with spatial extents orders of magnitude larger [3]. These long-range magnetic states could be used to produce new topological phases in hybrid systems such as arrays or clusters of magnetic atoms and molecules coupled through the 2D-superconducting medium.In this talk we describe a series of recent experiments which mapped superconductivity, vortices and YSR states in Pb/Si(111) and 2H-NbSe2 by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy at ultralow temperatures.[1] Ch. Brun, et al. Nature Phys. 10, 444 (2014)[2] D. Roditchev, et al. Nature Phys. 11, 332 (2015)[3] G. Ménard, et al. Nature Phys. 11, 1013 (2015)

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We present a thermodynamic description of a single magnetic impurity at the edge of a superconducting wire. The impurity exhibits four phases $\unicode{x2014}$ Kondo, Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) I and II, and local moment $\unicode{x2014}$ a phase diagram richer than in the gapless case, contrary to the expectation that the effects of impurities in gapped hosts are less consequential. We derive the impurity contribution to free energy $F_{\rm imp}(T)$ and entropy in each phase: in Kondo phase, the entropy flows monotonically from $\ln 2$ (UV) to 0 (IR) with critical exponents same as that of the conventional Kondo model; in YSR phases, thermal activation of a midgap bound state produces entropy overshoots above $\ln 2$, saturating to $\ln 2$ at high $T$ and approaching either 0 or $\ln 2$ at low $T$ depending on whether impurity is screened or not; in the local-moment phase the impurity remains effectively decoupled, with entropy near $\ln 2$, with some intermediate-temperature features that progressively fade as $δ\to 0$. These behaviors, including the entropy overshoots in the YSR and local-moment phases, stem from a splitting of the Hilbert space into distinct excitation towers: one in the Kondo phase, two in YSR~I, and three in YSR~II and the local-moment phase. Resolving these tower structures and thereby going beyond conventional TBA yields closed-form analytic expressions for the impurity contribution to the free energy and entropy across the entire phase diagram.

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In 1964 V. L. Ginzburg predicted that new superconducting phases could appear in ultrathin films deposited on insulating surfaces. In 2010 superconductivity below 2K was discovered in some crystalline atomic monolayers of Pb grown on atomically clean Si(111) [1,2]. In crystalline monolayers of Pb on Si(111) the superconducting condensate is an intrinsic Josephson network formed by superconducting terraces coupled by Josephson links at individual atomic steps [1]. The detailed atomic arrangement at each step decides the strength of the Josephson coupling. In a magnetic field, the superconducting vortex phase contains different kinds of vortices, ranging from Abrikosov to Josephson limits. Amorphous monolayers of Pb are non-superconducting correlated metals. Playing with geometry of in-situ grown samples enables realizing lateral SNS junctions, reveal and study Josephson proximity vortices inside their N-parts [2].When individual magnetic impurities are added, the Cooper pairs are diffused forming so-called Yu, Shiba and Rusinov (YSR) bound states. While in three-dimensional superconductors these states rapidly decay around impurities on atomic scale, superconductors with two-dimensional electronic structure such as Pb-monolayers on Si(111) or 2H-NbSe2 host YSR bound states with spatial extents orders of magnitude larger [3]. These long-range magnetic states could be used to produce new topological phases in hybrid systems such as arrays or clusters of magnetic atoms and molecules coupled through the 2D-superconducting medium.In this talk we describe a series of recent experiments which mapped superconductivity, vortices and YSR states in Pb/Si(111) and 2H-NbSe2 by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy at ultralow temperatures.[1] Ch. Brun, et al. Nature Phys. 10, 444 (2014)[2] D. Roditchev, et al. Nature Phys. 11, 332 (2015)[3] G. Ménard, et al. Nature Phys. 11, 1013 (2015)
Vortices and vortex lattices play a major role in determining the transport properties of type-II superconductors[1–3], and enable a platform to investigate exotic superconducting physics[4,5]. The study of vortex matter has generally focused on novel states in 2D films and structures, and has recently moved to investigating systems with constrained dimensions and smaller vortex numbers[6–11]. Vortices are responsible, for example, for some electrical transport regimes in superconducting films, as well as the Berezinkskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in superconducting films[12]. Unconventional forms of superconductivity, such as the spin triplet pairing predicted in Sr2RuO4, or in topological insulators paired to s-wave superconductors, contain two condensates that may support two vortex lattices, and may display Majorana modes, signatures of which may have been seen in other superconducting systems[13–17]. The vortex-vortex interactions, or inter and intra-condensate couplings in multicondensate systems, are important parameters that characterize the behavior of the systems that display such phenomena[18–20]. In investigating these parameters, a technique that can both probe the energies in a system, as well as manipulate the vortices therein, has long been desired. In this work, we report on progress in determining the energy scales of vortex systems, as well as limited control over the vortex motion. Using a technique based on magnetic force microscopy, we can directly measure the resonant motion of vortices present in a superconducting lattice. We use a scanning magnetic tip to trap a small number of vortices in a superconducting Josephson junction array near the tip. By observing the resonant motion of the configuration of vortices, a map of the location of energy degeneracies between different stable configurations is generated. From this data, we use a simulation to extract the relative strengths of the characteristic energy scales for the system, including the vortex-magnetic field interaction, the vortex-vortex interaction strength, and the chemical potential for the vortices. The simulations for small numbers of vortices fits the data well for multiple field profiles and lattice spacings. The ability to tune the vortex number and configurations by changing the magnetic field profile from the tip, as well as the lattice parameters of the superconducting surface, are key portions of this technique. We demonstrate that the relative strengths of the chemical potential and vortex-vortex interactions can be tuned relative to the vortex-magnetic field energy by changing the lattice spacing of the array. We also show that by moving the tip farther from or closer to the surface, which changes the potential well from the tip, that the configurations of vortices can be modified. From the experiments, we show that this technique can be used to both extract the strengths of the relative energy scales in this system and other superconducting systems, as well as for manipulating the vortex configurations for quantum computation applications.
In pursuit of the elusive mechanism of high- T C superconductors (HTSC), spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy (SI-STM) is an indispensable tool for surveying local properties of HTSC. Since a conventional STM utilizes metal tips, which allow the examination of only quasiparticles and not superconducting (SC) pairs, Josephson tunneling using STM has been demonstrated by many authors in the past. An atomically resolved scanning Josephson tunneling microscopy (SJTM), however, was realized only recently on Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x (Bi-2212) below 50 mK and on the Pb(110) surface at 20 mK. Here we report the atomically resolved SJTM on Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x at 4.2 K using Bi-2212 tips created in situ . The I - V characteristics show clear zero bias conductance peaks following Ambegaokar-Baratoff (AB) theory. A gap map was produced for the first time using an atomically resolved Josephson critical current map I C ( r ) and AB theory. Surprisingly, we found that this new gap map is anticorrelated to the gap map produced by a conventional method relying on the coherence peaks. Quasiparticle resonance due to a single isolated zinc atom impurity was also observed by SJTM, indicating that atomically resolved SJTM was achieved at 4.2 K. Our result provides a starting point for realizing SJTM at even higher temperatures, rendering possible investigation of the existence of SC pairs in HTSC above the T C .
For a two-dimensional ultra-cold Fermi superfluid with an effective static magnetic impurity, we theoretically investigated the variation of the Yu–Shiba–Rusinov (YSR) bound state in the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover regime. Within the framework of mean-field theory, analytical results of the YSR bound state energy were obtained as a function of the interaction parameters. First, when the background Fermi superfluid system stays in the weakly interacting BCS regime, we found that the YSR bound state energy is linearly dependent on the gap parameter with its coefficient slightly different from previous results. Second, we discovered re-entrance phenomena for the YSR state and an upper bound of the strength of the interaction between the paired atoms. By carefully analyzing the bound state energy as a function of the interaction parameters, we obtained a phase diagram showing the existence of the YSR state. Finally, we concluded that the re-entrance phenomena and the critical point can be easily experimentally detected through measurement of radio-frequency spectroscopy and density of states using current experimental techniques.
We present a thermodynamic description of a single magnetic impurity at the edge of a superconducting wire. The impurity exhibits four phases $\unicode{x2014}$ Kondo, Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) I and II, and local moment $\unicode{x2014}$ a phase diagram richer than in the gapless case, contrary to the expectation that the effects of impurities in gapped hosts are less consequential. We derive the impurity contribution to free energy Fimp(T)F_{\rm imp}(T)Fimp​(T) and entropy in each phase: in Kondo phase, the entropy flows monotonically from ln⁡2\ln 2ln2 (UV) to 0 (IR) with critical exponents same as that of the conventional Kondo model; in YSR phases, thermal activation of a midgap bound state produces entropy overshoots above ln⁡2\ln 2ln2, saturating to ln⁡2\ln 2ln2 at high TTT and approaching either 0 or ln⁡2\ln 2ln2 at low TTT depending on whether impurity is screened or not; in the local-moment phase the impurity remains effectively decoupled, with entropy near ln⁡2\ln 2ln2, with some intermediate-temperature features that progressively fade as δ→0δ\to 0δ→0. These behaviors, including the entropy overshoots in the YSR and local-moment phases, stem from a splitting of the Hilbert space into distinct excitation towers: one in the Kondo phase, two in YSR~I, and three in YSR~II and the local-moment phase. Resolving these tower structures and thereby going beyond conventional TBA yields closed-form analytic expressions for the impurity contribution to the free energy and entropy across the entire phase diagram.