Toward the Light‐Operated Superconducting Devices: Circularly Polarized Radiation Manipulates the Current‐Carrying States in Superconducting Rings

Abstract

The ability to rapidly control and manipulate superconducting states is one of the great challenges of modern condensed matter physics. Circularly polarized radiation interacting with a superconducting condensate acts as an effective magnetic field that can generate supercurrents and DC magnetic moments through the inverse Faraday effect (IFE). Using the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL) equation formalism, the current-carrying states of a small superconducting ring illuminated by such radiation is calculated. Numerical simulations demonstrate the possibility to on-demand switch between current-carrying states in the superconductor by controlling the helicity of the electromagnetic field polarization. This result opens the way to all-optical operation of superconducting devices.

All-optical generation of Abrikosov vortices by the Inverse Faraday Effect

“…In the case of a superconducting system, the light-induced dynamics of the order parameter comprises a nondissipative oscillatory contribution, which arises from the imaginary part of the order parameter relaxation time and creates the currents maintaining a nonzero magnetic moment [28]. It was theoretically shown [29,30] that the interplay of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism and IFE in the case of a superconducting ring leads to the generation of the circulating current states with the rotation directions controlled by the external light polarization.…”