The book introduces scientists and graduate students to superconductivity, and highlights the differences arising from the different dimensionality of the sample under study. It focuses on transport in one-dimensional superconductors, describing relevant theories with particular emphasis on experimental results. It closely relates these results to the emergence of various novel fabrication techniques. The book closes by discussing future perspectives, and the connection and relevance to other physical systems, including superfluidity, Bose-Einstein condensates, and possibly cosmic strings.

Fabio Altomare works as Experimental Physicist at D-Wave Systems where he is involved in the practical implementation of an adiabatic quantum processor. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2004 studying superconductivity in 1-dimensional nanowire. Before his current appointment, he worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate at Duke University, where he studied transport in dilute magnetic semiconductors, and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, where he worked on coupled superconducting qubits. His interests include device fabrication, superconductivity in 1-dimension, and superconducting qubits.Albert M. Chang is Professor at the Department of Physics at Duke University since 2003. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and spent a large part of his career at Bell Laboratories. Prior to his current appointment, he was professor at Purdue University. He has been an APS fellow since 2000 for experimental studies of quantum Hall edge states and Luttinger liquids. Current interests include transport in quantum dots and dilute magnetic semiconductors, superconductivity in 1-dimension, scanning hall probe microscopy, fractional charges and statistics in the fractional quantum hall effect, and 1D Wigner-crystal-like states in ballistic quantum point contacts.

PART I THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF SUPERCONDUCTIVITY IN 1D NANOWIRES 1 Superconductivity: Basics and Formulation 2 One-Dimensional Superconductivity: Basic Notions 3 Quantum Phase Slips and Quantum Phase Transitions 4 Duality 5 Proximity Related Phenomena PART II REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS ON 1D SUPERCONDUCTIVITY 6 Experimental Technique for Nanowire Fabrication 7 Experimental Review of Experiments on 1D Superconducting Nanowire 8 Coherent Quantum Phase Slips 9 1D Superconductivity in Related System