Gate-tunable crossover between vortex-interaction and pinning dominated regimes in Josephson-coupled Lead-islands on graphene (2401.04532v1)

Abstract: Resistance of a Josephson junction array consisting of randomly distributed lead (Pb) islands on exfoliated single layer graphene shows a broad superconducting transition to zero with an onset temperature close to the transition temperature of bulk Pb. The transition evolves with the back-gate voltage and exhibits two peaks in temperature derivative of resistance. The region above the lower temperature peak is found to be well described by Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless model of thermal unbinding of vortex anti-vortex pairs while that below this peak fits well with the Ambegaokar- Halperin model of thermally-activated phase slip or vortex motion in Josephson junction arrays. Thus a gate-tunable crossover between interaction and pinning dominated vortices is inferred as the Josephson energy, dictating the pinning potential magnitude, increases with cooling while the effective screening length, dictating the range of inter-vortex interaction, reduces.