Related papers: Fixed-N Superconductivity: The Exact Crossover fro…
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…
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 superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic grains, i.e. grains sufficiently small that the conduction electron energy spectrum becomes discrete. The discrete excitation spectrum of an…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Superconducting pairing of electrons in nanoscale metallic particles with discrete energy levels and a fixed number of electrons is described by the reduced BCS model Hamiltonian. We show that this model is integrable by the algebraic Bethe…
BCS superconductivity is explained by a simple Hamiltonian describing an attractive pairing interaction between pairs of electrons. The Hamiltonian may be treated using a mean-field method, which is adequate to study equilibrium properties…
We outline a microscopic approach to the superconducting fluctuations and pairing correlations in the attractive Hubbard model above Tc, using the functional integral method. A crossover from BCS superconductivity to Bose condensation of…
Atomic nuclei and nano-scale metallic grains are in the crossover regime of pairing correlations between the bulk limit, where the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of superconductivity is valid, and the fluctuation-dominated regime,…
A new variational method for studying the equilibrium states of an interacting particles system has been proposed. The statistical description of the system is realized by means of a density matrix. This method is used for description of…
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 present a theory of superconducting p-n junctions. We consider a 2-band model of doped bulk semiconductors with attractive interactions between the charge carriers and derive the superconducting order parameter, the quasiparticle density…
A standard perturbative expansion around the mean-field solution is used to derive the low-energy effective action for superconductors at T=0. Taking into account the density fluctuations at the outset we get the effective action where the…
We model fermions with an attractive interaction in an optical lattice with a single-band Hubbard model away from half-filling with on-site attraction $U$ and nearest neighbor hopping $t$. Our goal is to understand the crossover from BCS…
A microscopic theory of the transport properties of quantum point contacts giving a unified description of the normal conductor- superconductor (N-S) and superconductor-superconductor (S-S) cases is presented. It is based on a model…
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…
A nano-scale metallic grain in which the single-particle dynamics are chaotic is described by the so-called universal Hamiltonian. This Hamiltonian includes a superconducting pairing term and a ferromagnetic exchange term that compete with…
Though commonly unrecognized, a superconducting BCS condensate consists of equal numbers of two-electron (2e) and two-hole (2h) Cooper pairs (CPs). A complete (in the sense that 2h-CPs are not ignored) boson-fermion statistical model,…