Size Effects in the Nonlinear Resistance and Flux Creep in a Virtual Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless State of Superconducting Films

We show that the size effects radically affect the electric-field-current (E-I) relation of superconducting films. We calculate E(J) due to thermally activated hopping of single vortices driven by a current I across the film in a magnetic field H, taking into account the interaction of free vortices with their antivortex images and peaks in the Meissner currents at the film edges. The unbinding of the virtual vortex-antivortex pairs not only mimics the transport uniform Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless behavior, it can also dominate the observed E(J) and result in the field-dependent Ohmic resistance at small I. We show that E(I) can be tuned by changing the film geometry and propose experimental tests of this theory.