Diamagnetic orbital response of mesoscopic silver rings

Abstract

We report measurements of the flux-dependent orbital magnetic susceptibility of an ensemble of 10^5 disconnected silver rings at 217 MHz. Because of the strong spin-orbit scattering rate in silver this experiment is a test of existing theories on orbital magnetism. Below 100 mK the rings exhibit a magnetic signal with a flux periodicity of h/2 e consistent with averaged persistent currents, whose amplitude is estimated to be of the order of 0.3 nA. The sign of the oscillations indicates diamagnetism in the vicinity of zero magnetic field. This sign is not consistent with theoretical predictions for average persistent currents unless considering attractive interactions in silver. We propose an alternative interpretation taking into account spin orbit scattering and finite frequency.