paper

Review: Superconductivity in ultrasmall metallic grains

arXiv:cond-mat/0101021 · doi:10.1002/1521-3889(200103)10:3<219::AID-ANDP219>3.0.CO;2-I

Abstract

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 individual grain can be measured by the technique of single-electron tunneling spectroscopy, and reveals parity effects indicative of pairing correlations in the grain. After introducing the discrete BCS model that has been used to model such grains, we review a phenomenological, grand-canonical, variational BCS theory describing the paramagnetic breakdown of these pairing correlations with increasing magnetic field. We also review recent canonical theories that have been developed to describe how pairing correlations change during the crossover, with decreasing grain size, from the bulk limit to the limit of few electrons, and compare their results to those obtained using Richardson's exact solution of the discrete BCS model. [The present review, which is addressed at readers interested exclusively in superconducting aspects of ultrasmall grains, is an excerpt from a more general review of ultrasmall metallic grains, cond-mat/0101019, in which nonequilibrium excitations, spin-orbit scattering, ferromagnetism and the effect of a magnetic impurity are reviewed, too.]

60 pages Latex, 20 figures, part of the author's habilitation thesis, to appear in Annalen der Physik (Leipzig), 10, No.3 (2001)

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