An Ising-Glauber Spin Cluster Model for Temperature Dependent Magnetization Noise in SQUIDs

Abstract

Clusters of interacting two-level-systems (TLS),likely due to $F^+$ centers at the metal-insulator interface, are shown to self consistently lead to $1/f^{\alpha }$ magnetization noise in SQUIDs. By introducing a correlation-function calculation method and without any a priori assumptions on the distribution of fluctuation rates, it is shown why the flux noise is only weakly temperature dependent with $\alpha\lesssim 1$, while the inductance noise has a huge temperature dependence seen in experiment, even though the mechanism producing both spectra is the same. Though both ferromagnetic- RKKY and short-range-interactions (SRI) lead to strong flux-inductance-noise cross-correlations seen in experiment, the flux noise varies a lot with temperature for SRI. Hence it is unlikely that the TLS's time reversal symmetry is broken by the same mechanism which mediates surface ferromagnetism in nanoparticles and thin films of the same insulator materials.