Abstract
We investigate the nucleation of superconductivity in a uniform perpendicular magnetic field H in aluminum microsquares containing a few (two and four) submicron holes (antidots). The normal/superconducting phase boundary of these structures shows a quite different behavior in low and high fields. In the low magnetic-field regime fluxoid quantization around each antidot leads to oscillations in expected from the specific sample geometry, and reminiscent of the network behavior. In high magnetic fields, the boundaries of the perforated and a reference nonperforated microsquare reveal cusps at the same values of (where is the applied magnetic flux threading the total square area and is the superconducting flux quantum), while the background on becomes quasilinear, indicating that a giant vortex state is established. The influence of the actual geometries on is analyzed in the framework of the linearized Ginzburg-Landau theory.
- Received 5 June 1998
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.60.4285
©1999 American Physical Society