Speaker: Alex Levchenko, Michigan State University
Abstract: I will present a systematic study of the statistical properties of switching current distributions deduced from the measurements of phase-slip-induced switching events on different types of superconducting weak links. I will discuss three types of devices in which a weak link is formed either by a superconducting nanowire, a graphene flake subject to proximity effect, or a quantum dot. We demonstrate that independently of the nature of the weak link, higher moments of the distribution take universal values. In particular, the third moment (skewness) of the distribution is close to -1 both in thermal and quantum regimes. The fourth moment (kurtosis) also takes a universal value close to 5. The experimentally discovered universality of the cummulants is confirmed by an analytical model.