Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Letter › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 13/12/1993 |
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<mark>Journal</mark> | Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter |
Issue number | 50 |
Volume | 5 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Pages (from-to) | L651-L662 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
We examine the change deltaG in the two-probe electrical conductance G of a mesoscopic sample due to the switching on of superconductivity and prove that when conductance of the normal mesoscopic host is sufficiently high, the onset of superconductivity always produces a decrease in G. If the superconducting order parameter is of magnitude DELTA, we focus attention on the susceptibility chiDELTA = lim(DELTA-->0) partial derivative G(DELTA)/partial derivative (DELTA2). For weakly disordered, (i.e. ballistic) normal hosts, the average value of this quantity is negative. For diffusive hosts, the mean of chiDELTA increases linearly with [N - G(0)], where N is the number of open channels in the external, current carrying probes, while the fluctuations about the mean are found to be independent of G(0). With increasing normal disorder, chiDELTA undergoes a transition to a region of large fluctuations, before approaching a strongly localized regime, where typical values of chiDELTA are of order [ln2G(0)]-1.