Specific Heat Measurements of Mesoscopic Loops

We report highly sensitive specific heat measurements on mesoscopic superconducting loops at low temperature. These mesoscopic systems exhibit thermal properties significantly different from that of the bulk materials. The measurement is performed on a silicon membrane sensor where 450 000 superconducting aluminium loops are deposited through electron beam lithography, under an applied magnetic field. Each entry of a vortex is associated to a jump in the specific heat of few thousands of Boltzmann constant kB indicating the existence of phase transitions. The periodicity of this sequential phase transitions is a nontrivial behaviour and varies strongly as the temperature is decreased. The successive phase transitions are well described by the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity. The presence of metastable states is responsible for the n0 (n=1, 2, 3...) periodicity of the discontinuities of the measured specific heat.