Related papers: Review: Superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic g…
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…
Studies of pairing correlations in ultrasmall metallic grains have commonly been based on a simple reduced BCS-model describing the scattering of pairs of electrons between discrete energy levels that come in time-reversed pairs. This model…
We review recent experimental and theoretical work on ultrasmall metallic grains, i.e. grains sufficiently small that the conduction electron energy spectrum becomes discrete. The discrete excitation spectrum of an individual grain can be…
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…
For assemblies of superconductor nanograins, the magnetic response is analyzed as a function of both temperature and magnetic field. In order to describe the interaction energy of electron pairs for a huge number of many-particle states,…
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 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…
We use two truly canonical approaches to describe superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic grains: (a) a variational fixed-N projected BCS-like theory and (b) an exact solution of the model Hamiltonian developed by Richardson in context…
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…
We study finite size effects in superconducting metallic grains and determine the BCS order parameter and the low energy excitation spectrum in terms of size, and shape of the grain. Our approach combines the BCS self-consistency condition,…
We study the thermodynamic properties of a small superconducting metallic grain using a quantum Monte Carlo method. The grain is described by the universal Hamiltonian, containing pairing and ferromagnetic exchange correlations. In…
We present a truly canonical theory of superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic grains by variationally optimizing fixed-N projected BCS wave-functions, which yields the first full description of the entire crossover from the bulk BCS…
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.…
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…
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 study the magnetic-field-induced breakdown of superconductivity in nm-scale metal grains having a mean electron level spacing $d \simeq \tilde\Delta$ (bulk gap). Using a generalized variational BCS approach that yields good qualitative…
We study the properties of ultrasmall metallic grains with sizes in the range of 20 up to 400 electrons. Using a particle-hole version of the DMRG method we compute condensation energies, spectroscopic gaps, pairing parameters and…
A nano-scale metallic grain (nanoparticle) with irregular boundaries in which the single-particle dynamics are chaotic is a zero-dimensional system described by the so-called universal Hamiltonian in the limit of a large number of…
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…
Scanning tunneling spectroscopies are performed below 100~mK on nano-crystalline boron-doped diamond films characterized by Transmission Electron Microscopy and transport measurements. We demonstrate a strong correlation between the local…