2009/10/13 by Shanenko, A. A., Croitoru, M. D., Vagov, A. +1
#FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0910.2345
The Cooper-pair size (i.e., the BCS coherence length) in low-dimensional superconductors is dramatically modified by quantum-size effects. In particular, for nanowires made of conventional superconducting materials, we show that the coherence length exhibits size-dependent drops by two-three orders of magnitude and reaches values found in high-Tc superconductors. This phenomenon is surprisingly similar to the well-known BCS-BEC crossover but with one important exception: it is driven by the transverse quantization of the electron spectrum rather than by the strength of the fermion-fermion interaction. Similar results can be expected for other systems with the same structure of the single-particle spectrum, e.g, for superfluid Fermi gases confined in a quantum-wire or quantum-well geometry.