Measurement of Critical Currents of Superconducting Aluminum Nanowires in External Magnetic Fields: Evidence for a Weber Blockade

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We have studied the critical current as a function of magnetic field in short and narrow superconducting aluminum nanowires. In the range of magnetic fields in which vortices can enter a nanowire in a single row, we find regular oscillations of the critical current as a function of magnetic field, with each oscillation corresponding to adding a single vortex to the nanowire. In this regime, the nanowires behave as quantum dots for vortices. As a function of current and magnetic field, we find diamond-shaped regions in which the resistance is zero and the number of vortices is fixed.