Thermal conductance by the inverse proximity effect in a superconductor

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Aug 27;105(9):097004. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.097004. Epub 2010 Aug 27.

Abstract

We study heat transport in hybrid lateral normal-metal-superconductor-normal-metal structures. We find the thermal conductance of a short superconducting wire to be strongly enhanced beyond the BCS value due to the inverse proximity effect, resulting from contributions of elastic cotunneling and crossed Andreev reflection of quasiparticles. Our measurements agree with a model based on the quasiclassical theory of inhomogeneous superconductivity in the diffusive limit.