Superconductor-insulator transitions in three-dimensional indium-oxide at high pressures.

Experiments investigating magnetic-field-tuned superconductor-insulator transition (HSIT) mostly focus on two-dimensional material systems where the transition and its proximate ground-state phases, often exhibit features that are seemingly at odds with the expected behavior. Here we present a complementary study of a three-dimensional pressure-packed amorphous indium-oxide (InOx) powder where granularity controls the HSIT. Above a low threshold pressure of ∼0.2 GPa, vestiges of superconductivity are detected, although neither a true superconducting transition nor insulating behavior are observed. Instead, a saturation at very high resistivity at low pressure is followed by saturation at very low resistivity at higher pressure. We identify both as different manifestations of anomalous metallic phases dominated by superconducting fluctuations. By analogy with previous identification of the low resistance saturation as a 'failed superconductor', our data suggests that the very high resistance saturation is a manifestation of a 'failed insulator'. Above a threshold pressure of ∼6 GPa, the sample becomes fully packed, and superconductivity is robust, withTCtunable with pressure. A quantum critical point atPC∼ 25 GPa marks the complete suppression of superconductivity. For a finite pressure belowPC, a magnetic field is shown to induce a HSIT from a true zero-resistance superconducting state to a weakly insulating behavior. Determining the critical field,HC, we show that similar to the 2D behavior, the insulating-like state maintains a superconducting character, which is quenched at higher field, above which the magnetoresistance decreases to its fermionic normal state value.

Superconductor-insulator transition in two-dimensional indium-indium-oxide composite.

The magnetic-field-tuned superconductor-to-insulator transition was studied in a hybrid system of superconducting indium islands, deposited on an indium oxide (InOx) thin film, which exhibits global superconductivity at low magnetic fields. Vacuum annealing was used to tune the conductivity of the InOx film, thereby tuning the inergrain coupling and the nature of the transition. The hybrid system exhibits a "giant" magnetoresistance above the magnetic-field-tuned superconductor-to-insulator transition (H-SIT), with critical behavior similar to that of uniform InOx films but at much lower magnetic fields, that manifests the duality between Cooper pairs and vortices. A key feature of this hybrid system is the separation between the quantum criticality and the onset of nonequilibrium behavior.