CPM Seminar

Non-uniform Phases in Superconducting and Superfluid He-3 Films

Anton Vorontsov

Montana State University

The drive to miniature electronics and quantum computing presents us with a great opportunity to explore new phases of matter in small volumes and to study unusual quasiparticle states that appear in confined geometries. In this talk I will describe new superconducting and superfluid phases that can spontaneously appear in films with thicknesses of several coherence lengths. I will connect these phases to collective bound states that live on surfaces and interfaces of the films. Sometimes these states are related to the topological properties of the matter, as in superfluid He-3. In strongly confined geometries, surface quasiparticle states dominate the properties of the entire sample and lead to phases with broken translational and time-reversal symmetries. Such phases can form either a complicated domain structures or carry a spontaneous superfluid current along the length of the film. Which state appears is determined by the orbital and spin structures of the superfluid condensate.