Unveiling mechanisms of electric field effects on superconductors by a magnetic field response

Abstract

We demonstrate that superconducting aluminium nanobridges can be driven into a state with complete suppression of the critical supercurrent via electrostatic gating. Probing both in- A nd out-of-plane magnetic field responses in the presence of electrostatic gating can unveil the mechanisms that primarily cause the superconducting electric field effects. Remarkably, we find that a magnetic field, independently of its orientation, has only a weak influence on the critical electric field that identifies the transition from the superconducting state to a phase with vanishing critical supercurrent. This observation points to the absence of a direct coupling between the electric field and the amplitude of the superconducting order parameter or 2π-phase slips via vortex generation. The magnetic field effect observed in the presence of electrostatic gating is described within a microscopic model where a spatially uniform interband π phase is stabilized by the electric field. Such an intrinsic superconducting phase rearrangement can account for the suppression of the supercurrent, as well as for the weak dependence of the critical magnetic fields on the electric field.