Related papers: Effect of Level Statistics on Superconductivity in…
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 model that is commonly used for ultrasmall superconducting grains has an exact solution worked out long ago by Richardson in the context of nuclear physics. We use it to check the quality of previous treatments of this…
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…
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…
Recently, it has been possible to construct single-electron transistors to study electronic properties, including superconductivity, in metallic grains of nanometer size. Among several theoretical results are suppression of…
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…
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 the superconductivity in small grains in the regime when the quantum level spacing $\delta\varepsilon$ is comparable to the gap $\Delta$. As $\delta\varepsilon$ is increased, the system crosses over from superconducting to normal…
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…
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,…
Effect of level statistics on local electronic states and local magnetism in nanoscale metallic grains with transition-metal impurity in the ballistic regime is studied. It is shown that the mean occupation of local electron and the local…
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,…
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 study the average density of states in a small metallic grain coupled to two superconductors with the phase difference $\pi$, in a magnetic field. The spectrum of the low-energy excitations in the grain is described by the random matrix…
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…
Motivated by the discovery of the anomalous metal state in thin film systems and suggestions that coexistence of superconducting and metallic components is crucial to the formation of the state, we study in this paper a model of mixed…
We study the thermodynamics of ultrasmall metallic grains with the mean level spacing comparable or larger than the pairing correlation energy in the whole range of temperatures. A complete picture of the thermodynamics in such systems is…
Motivated by recent experiments reporting the suppression of the critical current in superconducting Dayem bridges by the application of strong electrostatic fields, in this work we study the impact on the superconducting gap of charge…
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…
We study pairing correlations in ultrasmall superconductor in the nanoscopic limit by means of a toy model where electrons are confined in a single, multiply degenerate energy level. We solve the model exactly to investigate the temperature…