title: Nanoscale assembly of superconducting vortices with scanning tunnelling microscope tip.
abstract: Vortices play a crucial role in determining the properties of superconductors as well as their applications. Therefore, characterization and manipulation of vortices, especially at the single-vortex level, is of great importance. Among many techniques to study single vortices, scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) stands out as a powerful tool, due to its ability to detect the local electronic states and high spatial resolution. However, local control of superconductivity as well as the manipulation of individual vortices with the STM tip is still lacking. Here we report a new function of the STM, namely to control the local pinning in a superconductor through the heating effect. Such effect allows us to quench the superconducting state at nanoscale, and leads to the growth of vortex clusters whose size can be controlled by the bias voltage. We also demonstrate the use of an STM tip to assemble single-quantum vortices into desired nanoscale configurations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jun-Yi
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.|TQC-Theory of Quantum and Complex Systems, Department of Physics, Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Antwerpen, Belgium.
authors.forename: Vladimir N
authors.initials: VN
authors.lastname: Gladilin
authors.affiliation: TQC-Theory of Quantum and Complex Systems, Department of Physics, Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Antwerpen, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8814-6837
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tempere
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.|School of Mechanics, Civil Engineering and Architecture, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710071, China.
authors.forename: Cun
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4132-7096
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: TQC-Theory of Quantum and Complex Systems, Department of Physics, Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Antwerpen, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jozef T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Devreese
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Joris
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6894-7258
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van de Vondel
authors.affiliation: School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710071, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Youhe
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Victor V
authors.initials: VV
authors.lastname: Moshchalkov