Quantum excitations of static charges in the Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity

Abstract

We point out that in superconductors there may exist localized quantum excitations of the electric and condensate fields surrounding a static charge, which cannot be interpreted as simply the ground state of the screened charge plus some number of massive photons. This is illustrated via a lattice Monte Carlo calculation of the energy spectrum of a pair of separated static charges in an effective Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity.

arXiv comment8 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (5)

• The Higgs phase as a spin glass, and the transition between varieties of confinement
• The nature of symmetry breaking in the superconducting ground state
• Excitations of elementary fermions in gauge Higgs theories
• Excitations of isolated static charges in the charge $q=2$ abelian Higgs model
• Excited states of massive fermions in a chiral gauge theory