Single quasiparticle excitation dynamics on a superconducting island

Autor:	Maisi, V. F., Lotkhov, S. V., Kemppinen, A., Heimes, A., Muhonen, J. T., Pekola, J. P.
Rok vydání:	2012
Předmět:	Condensed Matter - Superconductivity
Druh dokumentu:	Working Paper
Popis:	We investigate single quasiparticle excitation dynamics on a small superconducting aluminum island connected to normal metallic leads by tunnel junctions. We find the island to be free of excitations within the measurement resolution allowing us to determine Cooper pair breaking rate to be less than 3 kHz. By tuning the Coulomb energy of the island to have an odd number of electrons, one of them remains unpaired. We detect it by measuring its relaxation rate via tunneling. By injecting electrons with a periodic gate voltage, we probe electron-phonon interaction and relaxation down to a single quasiparticle excitation pair, with a measured recombination rate of 8 kHz. Our experiment yields a strong test of BCS-theory in aluminum as the results are consistent with it without free parameters. Comment: Added abstract and missing \Delta's to Fig. 1. Reformulated text
Databáze:	arXiv
Externí odkaz:	http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2755 Zobrazit plný text záznamu View this record from Arxiv