Singular Weak-Field Thermodynamics of 2D Superconductors

Abstract

In a bulk 3D type-II superconductor, the lower critical field at which an isolated vortex becomes thermodynamically favorable is a size-independent material property. We show that the situation is different in 2D superconductors: the larger the superconductor, the weaker the field needed to create its first vortex. The lower critical field in 2D is always size-dependent. For a disk of area $\mathcal A$, the lower critical field $B_v(\mathcal A)$ scales as $\mathcal A^{-1}\ln(\mathcal A/\mathcal A_0)$ in the weak-screening regime and as $\mathcal A^{-1/2}$ in the strong-screening regime. We derive these results from an analytically tractable microscopic model that admits many-body wavefunctions for both the uniform and singly quantized vortex states in a magnetic field, and incorporate screening by coupling their long-distance 2D supercurrents to 3D Maxwell equations. These results motivate organizing the weak-field ground-state of a 2D superconductor in the $(1/\mathcal A,B)$ plane. The origin represents the zero-field thermodynamic limit and it is singular. Approaching the origin along the $B$ axis leads to an increasingly dilute vortex lattice, whereas approaching along the $1/\mathcal A$ axis yields the uniform vortex-free state. Our theory shows that every trajectory carrying fixed finite flux ultimately approaches the vortex-free state in the thermodynamic limit and provides a firm microscopic foundation for the weak-field thermodynamics of 2D superconductors.