Related papers: BCS theory for finite size superconductors
We combine the BCS self-consistency condition, a semiclassical expansion for the spectral density and interaction matrix elements to describe analytically how the superconducting gap depends on the size and shape of a 2d and 3d…
We review recent experimental and theoretical work on superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic grains, i.e. grains sufficiently small that the conduction electron energy spectrum becomes discrete. The discrete excitation spectrum of an…
Small superconducting grains are discussed in the frameworks of both the reduced BCS Hamiltonian and the Universal Hamiltonian. It is shown that fluctuations of electrons in levels far from the Fermi energy dominate superconducting…
We study order parameter fluctuation effects in the superconducting state as a possible precursor to the pseudogap phenomena. Using a low-energy effective theory in the d-wave BCS model, we self-consistently calculate the single-particle…
The (mean field based) BCS theory is considered one of the most successful theories in condensed matter physics. It is justified in ordinary metal superconductors the coherence length $\xi$ is large, with two important features: the order…
The Richardson exact solution for the reduced BCS Hamiltonian is applied to examine how sensitive are the pairing characteristics (condensation energy, spectroscopic gap, parity gap) to a specific configuration of single-electron energy…
Recently an N=1 supersymmetric model of BCS superconductivity was proposed realizing spontaneous symmetry breaking of a U(1)_R symmetry. Due to scalar contributions the superconducting phase transition turned out to be first order rather…
Motivated by recent experiments on Al nanoparticles, we have studied the effects of fixed electron number and small size in nanoscale superconductors, by applying the canonical BCS theory for the attractive Hubbard model in two and three…
We develop a theory of superconductivity in ultrasmall (nm-scale) metallic grains having a discrete electronic eigenspectrum with a mean level spacing of order of the bulk gap. The theory is based on calculating the eigenspectrum using a…
Magnetic instability in gapless superconductors still remains as a puzzle. In this article, we point out that the instability might be caused by using BCS theory in mean-field approximation, where the phase fluctuation has been neglected.…
We investigate the breakdown of BCS superconductivity in {\em ultra}\/small metallic grains as a function of particle size (characterized by the mean spacing $d$ between discrete electronic eigenstates), and the parity ($P$ = even/odd) of…
The reduced BCS Hamiltonian for a metallic grain with a finite number of electrons is considered. The crossover between the ultrasmall regime, in which the level spacing, $d$, is larger than the bulk superconducting gap, $\Delta$, and the…
In the standard theory of superconductivity a quasiparticle excitation changes the energy of the system by the quasiparticle energy. But the number of excitations determine also the gap energy which further determines the energy of the…
We examine the destruction of superconducting pairing in metallic grains as their size is decreased for both even and odd numbers of electrons. This occurs when the average level spacing d is of the same order as the BCS order parameter.…
Borocarbide compounds with the formula RNi2B2C show interesting superconducting and magnetic properties and the coexistence of the two phenomena. BCS theory is extended to systems with underlying commensurate magnetic order. In the case of…
In recent experiments on nanoscale Al particles, whose electron number was fixed by charging effects, a ``negative gap'' was observed in particles with an odd number of electrons. This observation has called into question the use of a grand…
By means of the Lanczos method we analyze superconducting correlations in ultrasmall grains at fixed particle number. We compute the ground state properties and the excitation gap of the pairing Hamiltonian as a function of the level…
We review the effects of electron-electron interactions on the ground-state spin and the transport properties of ultra-small chaotic metallic grains. Our studies are based on an effective Hamiltonian that combines a superconducting BCS-like…
In this paper, we revisit the problem of dirty superconductors using a replica-symmetric BCS (RS-BCS) theory. We apply the RS-BCS theory to dirty superconductor grains of size $L^d$, where $L$ is the localization length and $d$ is the…
Generalized BCS equations which consistently include the projection on the particle-number parity are derived from a systematic variational method. Numerical solutions are given that are illustrative of ultra-small metallic grains. Compared…