Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/01/2006
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Title: Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices at the Nanoscale

Speaker: Dr. Paul Goldbart

Institute: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Location: ABB 102

Description:

SQUIDs, and other superconducting devices, can now be fabricated at the nanoscale by depositing suitable metals on to individual molecules, such as DNA and carbon nanotubes. In this colloquium, I shall describe how these nanoscale superconducting devices are made and how they operate. I shall pay particular attention to the intrinsic electrical resistance of these devices, especially their sensitivity to magnetic fields. This particular feature hints at possible uses of nanoscale SQUIDs, such as for mapping the phase of the superconducting order parameter and testing for superconducting correlations in novel materials and settings. As we shall see, simple models, rooted in the classic approaches to electrical resistance in Josephson junctions and superconducting wires, are capable of providing a quantitative understanding of the properties of nanoscale SQUIDs.