Related papers: Superconductivity in Ultrasmall Grains: Introducti…
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 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…
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,…
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 effects of superconducting pairing in small metallic grains. We show that in the limit of large Thouless conductance one can explicitly determine the low energy spectrum of the problem as an expansion in the inverse number of…
A model is introduced for two reduced BCS systems which are coupled through the transfer of Cooper pairs between the systems. The model may thus be used in the analysis of the Josephson effect arising from pair tunneling between two…
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…
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…
The paper is devoted to the effects of superconducting pairing in small metallic grains. It turns out that at strong superconducting coupling and in the limit of large Thouless conductance one can explicitly determine the low energy…
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…
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…
The use of exactly-solvable Richardson-Gaudin (R-G) models to describe the physics of systems with strong pair correlations is reviewed. We begin with a brief discussion of Richardson's early work, which demonstrated the exact solvability…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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,…
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,…