Superinsulator as a phase of bi-particle localized states

J. Lages; D. L. Shepelyansky

doi:10.1140/epjb/e2011-20160-8

EPJ

Superinsulator as a phase of bi-particle localized states

J. Lages¹ and D. L. Shepelyansky²^a

¹ Institut UTINAM, UMR CNRS 6213, Université de Franche-Comté, 25030 Besançon, France
² Laboratoire de Physique Théorique du CNRS (IRSAMC), Université de Toulouse, UPS, F-31062 Toulouse, France

Received: 4 March 2011
Revised: 27 April 2011
Published online: 25 May 2011

Abstract

We propose a physical picture of superinsulator observed recently in experiments with superconducting films in a magnetic field. On the basis of previous numerical studies we argue that a moderate attraction creates bi-particle localized states at intermediate disorder strength when noninteracting electron states are delocalized and metallic. Our present numerical study show that such localized pairs are broken by a static electric field which strength is above a certain threshold. We argue that such a breaking of localized pairs by a static field is at the origin of superinsulator breaking with a current jump observed experimentally above a certain critical voltage.