| In this thesis, we describe a number of experiments which are designed to explore the theoretically predicted phase transitions for two-dimensional superconductors. We first examine the behavior of a two-dimensional superconductor in the absence of a magnetic field, where the fluctuations in the phase of the superconducting order parameter results in the reduction of the superconducting transition temperature for a two-dimensional superconductor below the mean field transition temperature. The experimental results presented show the importance of the vortex unbinding mechanism; however they challenge some of the predictions of the current theoretical model for the normal/superconducting transition. We then turn our attention to the behavior of two-dimensional superconductors in the presence of a magnetic field. In this case, our experimental results show that vortices in weakly disordered two-dimensional superconducting films freeze into locally correlated areas at temperatures below the mean field transition temperature. The experimentally measured phase boundary between the liquid phase and the locally ordered solid phase for the vortices in our samples shows good agreement with that predicted by the dislocation unbinding melting mechanism for the two-dimensional vortex lattice. For this transition, we have also done a detailed study of the correlations in the vortex lattices as a function of the strength of pinning in our samples and established a connection between the melting theory and collective pinning theory for vortices in two dimensions. To fully examine the phase diagram of a two-dimensional superconductor we have extended our studies of the properties of this system to the limit of strong disorder, where superconductivity is weak. In this limit, we report experimental evidence for a zero temperature field-tuned superconducting-insulating phase transition driven by quantum fluctuation of the phase of the superconducting order parameter. Overall, the results of this thesis provide an experimental bases for a number of phase transitions in two-dimensional superconductors, thereby establishing a rich phase diagram for this system as a function of the temperature, the magnetic field, and the amount of disorder. |
