2001/06/06 by Julia S. Meyer, Benjamin D. Simons, B. D. Simons · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.64.134516
published as Phys. Rev. B 64, 134516 (2001) · 11 pages, 3 figures included. To be published in PRB (Sept. 2001)
arxiv created 2001/06/06 · openalex publication_date 2001/09/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Spatial fluctuations of the effective pairing interaction between electrons in a superconductor induce variations of the order parameter that in turn lead to significant changes in the density of states. In addition to an overall reduction of the quasiparticle energy gap, theory suggests that mesoscopic fluctuations of the impurity potential induce localized tail states below the mean-field gap edge. Using a field theoretic approach, we elucidate the nature of the states in the ``subgap'' region. Specifically, we show that these states are associated with replica-nontrivial instanton solutions of the mean-field equations.