Coulomb blockade of phase slip in mesoscopic charge-density-wave systems

Thermally activated phase-slip processes near electrical contacts are responsible for the nonlinear current–voltage characteristic in clean mesoscopic charge-density-wave systems. We calculate the phase-slip rate for a dislocation-loop nucleation and that for a dislocation-pair nucleation, by taking account of the influence of long-range Coulomb interactions. It is shown that due to a large charging energy associated with dislocation lines, the phase-slip rate is greatly reduced for both the nucleation processes when the applied voltage is smaller than a threshold voltage. This indicates that the collective current below the threshold voltage is strongly suppressed by the Coulomb blockade of the phase slip.