Superconductivity in Nanosystems: A Fruitful Path to New Phenomenology in Quantum Materials

Abstract

We reason that various recent works by different groups reporting new phenomenologies in superconductors can be understood in a unifying way as instances of the appearance of novel competitions (or synergies in some cases) between the coexisting orders at play in superconducting materials. In particular, we argue that the main common feature of such phenomenologies is to have emerged from the induction, by nanoengineering, of novel characteristic lengths for each order, or of custom regular spatial patterns affecting them. We claim, thus, that a fruitful path to discover new phenomenology is opened by these and future searches of novel nanostructurations of superconducting materials.