Manipulating superconducting fluctuations by the Little-Parks-de Gennes effect in ultrasmall Al loops

The destruction of superconducting phase coherence by quantum fluctuations and the control of these fluctuations are a problem of long-standing interest, with recent impetus provided by the relevance of these issues to the pursuit of high temperature superconductivity. Building on the work of Little and Parks, de Gennes predicted more than three decades ago that superconductivity could be destroyed near half-integer-flux quanta in ultrasmall loops, resulting in a destructive regime, and restored by adding a superconducting side branch, which does not affect the flux quantization condition. We report the experimental observation of this Little-Parks-de Gennes effect in Al loops prepared by advanced e-beam lithography. We show that the effect can be used to restore the lost phase coherence by employing side branches.