Role of Spatial Amplitude Fluctuations in Highly Disordered s-Wave Superconductors

Amit Ghosal, Mohit Randeria, and Nandini Trivedi
Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3940 – Published 2 November 1998
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Abstract

The effect of nonmagnetic impurities on 2D s-wave superconductors is studied beyond the weak disorder regime. Within the Bogoliubov–de Gennes (BdG) framework, the local pairing amplitude develops a broad distribution with significant weight near zero with increasing disorder. Surprisingly, the density of states continues to show a finite spectral gap. The persistence of the spectral gap at large disorder is shown to arise from the breakup of the system into superconducting “islands.” Superfluid density and off-diagonal correlations show a substantial reduction at high disorder. A simple analysis of phase fluctuations about the highly inhomogeneous BdG state is shown to lead to a transition to a nonsuperconducting state.

  • Received 4 June 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.3940

©1998 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Amit Ghosal, Mohit Randeria, and Nandini Trivedi

  • Department of Theoretical Physics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400005, India

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Issue

Vol. 81, Iss. 18 — 2 November 1998

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