Electron and phonon Cooling in a Superconductor - Normal Metal - Superconductor Tunnel Junction

Sukumar Rajauria (1) , Pengshun S. Luo , Thierry Fournier (2) , Frank. W. J. Hekking (3) , Hervé Courtois (4) , Bernard Pannetier (1)

1 NEEL - QuantECA - Circuits électroniques quantiques Alpes
2 NEEL - Nanofab - Nanofabrication
3 LPM2C - Laboratoire de physique et modélisation des milieux condensés
4 NEEL - QuNES - Nano-Electronique Quantique et Spectroscopie

We present evidence for the cooling of normal metal phonons by electron tunneling in a Superconductor - Normal metal - Superconductor tunnel junction. The normal metal electron temperature is extracted by comparing the device current-voltage characteristics to the theoretical prediction. We use a quantitative model for the phonon cooling that includes the electron-phonon coupling in the normal metal and the Kapitza resistance between the substrate and the metal. It gives an excellent fit to the data and enables us to extract an effective phonon temperature in the normal metal.

Domaines: Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Systèmes mésoscopiques et effet Hall quantique [cond-mat.mes-hall]

Sukumar Rajauria, Pengshun S. Luo, Thierry Fournier, Frank. W. J. Hekking, Hervé Courtois, et al.. Electron and phonon Cooling in a Superconductor - Normal Metal - Superconductor Tunnel Junction. Physical Review Letters, 2007, 99 (4), pp.047004. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.047004⟩. ⟨hal-00193193⟩