Microscopic theory of the Andreev gap

Abstract

We present a microscopic theory of the Andreev gap, i.e. the phenomenon that the density of states (DoS) of normal chaotic cavities attached to superconductors displays a hard gap centered around the Fermi energy. Our approach is based on a solution of the quantum Eilenberger equation in the regime $t_D\ll t_E$, where $t_D$ and $t_E$ are the classical dwell time and Ehrenfest-time, respectively. We show how quantum fluctuations eradicate the DoS at low energies and compute the profile of the gap to leading order in the parameter $t_D/t_E$ .

4 pages, 3 figures; revised version, more details, extra figure, new title

References in corpus (4)

• Gauge Covariance of the Aharonov-Bohm Phase in Noncommutative Quantum Mechanics
• Adiabatic quantization of Andreev levels
• Microscopic Theory for the Quantum to Classical Crossover in Chaotic Transport
• Quasiclassical fluctuations of the superconductor proximity gap in a chaotic system

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Semiclassical roots of universality in many-body quantum chaos
• Semiclassical gaps in the density of states of chaotic Andreev billiards
• The density of states of chaotic Andreev billiards
• Semiclassical theory of chaotic quantum resonances