Meissner effect, Spin Meissner effect and charge expulsion in superconductors

The Meissner effect and the Spin Meissner effect are the spontaneous generation of charge and spin current respectively near the surface of a metal making a transition to the superconducting state. The Meissner effect is well known but, I argue, not explained by the conventional theory, the Spin Meissner effect has yet to be detected. I propose that both effects take place in all superconductors, the first one in the presence of an applied magnetostatic field, the second one even in the absence of applied external fields. Both effects can be understood under the assumption that electrons expand their orbits and thereby lower their quantum kinetic energy in the transition to superconductivity. Associated with this process, the metal expels negative charge from the interior to the surface and an electric field is generated in the interior. The resulting charge current can be understood as arising from the magnetic Lorentz force on radially outgoing electrons, and the resulting spin current can be understood as arising from a spin Hall effect originating in the Rashba-like coupling of the electron magnetic moment to the internal electric field. The associated electrodynamics is qualitatively different from London electrodynamics, yet can be described by a small modification of the conventional London equations. The stability of the superconducting state and its macroscopic phase coherence hinge on the fact that the orbital angular momentum of the carriers of the spin current is found to be exactly $\hbar/2$, indicating a topological origin. The simplicity and universality of our theory argue for its validity, and the occurrence of superconductivity in many classes of materials can be understood within our theory.Comment: Submitted to SLAFES XX Proceeding

Optical sum rule violation, superfluid weight and condensation energy in the cuprates

The model of hole superconductivity predicts that the superfluid weight in the zero-frequency $\delta$-function in the optical conductivity has an anomalous contribution from high frequencies, due to lowering of the system's kinetic energy upon entering the superconducting state. The lowering of kinetic energy, mainly in-plane in origin, accounts for both the condensation energy of the superconductor as well as an increased potential energy due to larger Coulomb repulsion in the paired state. It leads to an apparent violation of the conductivity sum rule, which in the clean limit we predict to be substantially larger for in-plane than for c-axis conductivity. However, because cuprates are in the dirty limit for c-axis transport, the sum rule violation is found to be greatly enhanced in the c-direction. The model predicts the sum rule violation to be largest in the underdoped regime and to decrease with doping, more rapidly in the c-direction that in the plane. So far, experiments have detected sum rule violation in c-axis transport in several cuprates, as well as a decrease and disappearance of this violation for increasing doping, but no violation in-plane. We explore the predictions of the model for a wide range of parameters, both in the absence and in the presence of disorder, and the relation with current experimental knowledge.Comment: submitted to Phys.Rev.

Strongly correlated hopping and many-body bound states

We study a system in which the quantum dynamics of electrons depend on the particle density in their neighborhood. For any on-site repulsive interaction, we show that the exact two-body and three-body ground states are bound states. We also discuss the finite density case in a mean-field framework and we show that the system can undergo an unusual transition from an effective attractive interaction to a repulsive one, when varying the electron density.Comment: 6 pages, 6 EPS figures, minor modifications and references adde

Double beta decay to the first 2+2^+ state within a boson expansion formalism with a projected spherical single particle basis

The Gamow-Teller transition operator is written as a polynomial in the dipole proton-neutron and quadrupole charge conserving QRPA boson operators, using the prescription of the boson expansion technique of Belyaev-Zelevinski type. Then, the $2\nu\beta\beta$ process ending on the first $2^+$ state in the daughter nucleus is allowed via one, two and three boson states describing the odd-odd intermediate nucleus. The approach uses a single particle basis which is obtained by projecting out the good angular momentum from an orthogonal set of deformed functions. The basis for mother and daughter nuclei have different deformations. The GT transition amplitude as well as the half lives were calculated for ten transitions. Results are compared with the available data as well as with some predictions obtained with other methods.Comment: 12 page

"Superconductor"-insulator transitions in a Hubbard chain with nearest- neighbor and bond-charge interactions

We consider a half-filled generalized Hubbard chain with electron-hole symmetric correlated hopping and on-site and nearest-neighbor repulsions U and V respectively. In addition to the insulating charge- and spin-density wave phases for large V and U respectively, we identify a phase with dominant superconducting correlations at large distances for small U and V. Using two Berry phases (one associated to the charge and the other to the spin degrees of freedom) as discrete order parameters, we construct a phase diagram for the three thermodynamic phases.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Nonlinear analysis of a simple model of temperature evolution in a satellite

We analyse a simple model of the heat transfer to and from a small satellite orbiting round a solar system planet. Our approach considers the satellite isothermal, with external heat input from the environment and from internal energy dissipation, and output to the environment as black-body radiation. The resulting nonlinear ordinary differential equation for the satellite's temperature is analysed by qualitative, perturbation and numerical methods, which show that the temperature approaches a periodic pattern (attracting limit cycle). This approach can occur in two ways, according to the values of the parameters: (i) a slow decay towards the limit cycle over a time longer than the period, or (ii) a fast decay towards the limit cycle over a time shorter than the period. In the first case, an exactly soluble average equation is valid. We discuss the consequences of our model for the thermal stability of satellites.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures (5 EPS files

Thermodynamic properties and thermal correlation lengths of a Hubbard model with bond-charge interaction

We investigate the thermodynamics of a one-dimensional Hubbard model with bond-charge interaction X using the transfer matrix renormalization group method (TMRG). Numerical results for various quantities like spin and charge susceptibilities, particle densities, specific heat and thermal correlation lengths are presented and discussed. We compare our data also to results for the exactly solvable case X/t=1 as well as to bosonisation results for weak coupling X/t << 1, which shows excellent agreement. We confirm the existence of a Tomonaga-Luttinger and a Luther-Emery liquid phase, in agreement with previous studies at zero temperature. Thermal singlet-pair correlation lengths are shown to dominate density and spin correlations for finite temperatures in certain parameter regimes.Comment: 13 pages, revte

Surface effects in multiband superconductors. Application to MgB2_2

Metals with many bands at the Fermi level can have different band dependent gaps in the superconducting state. The absence of translational symmetry at an interface can induce interband scattering and modify the superconducting properties. We dicuss the relevance of these effects to recent experiments in MgB$_2$

Fermi Liquid Properties of a Two Dimensional Electron System With the Fermi Level Near a van Hove Singularity

We use a diagrammatic approach to study low energy physics of a two dimensional electron system where the Fermi level is near van-Hove singularies in the energy spectrum. We find that in most regions of the $\epsilon_F-T$ phase diagram the system behaves as a normal Fermi liquid rather than a marginal Fermi liquid. Particularly, the imaginary part of the self energy is much smaller than the excitation energy, which implies well defined quasiparticle excitations, and single particle properties are only weakly affected by the presence of the van-Hove singularities. The relevance to high temperature superconductivity is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 4 postscript figure

Triplet superconductivity in quasi one-dimensional systems

We study a Hubbard hamiltonian, including a quite general nearest-neighbor interaction, parametrized by repulsion V, exchange interactions Jz, Jperp, bond-charge interaction X and hopping of pairs W. The case of correlated hopping, in which the hopping between nearest neighbors depends upon the occupation of the two sites involved, is also described by the model for sufficiently weak interactions. We study the model in one dimension with usual continuum-limit field theory techniques, and determine the phase diagram. For arbitrary filling, we find a very simple necessary condition for the existence of dominant triplet superconducting correlations at large distance in the spin SU(2) symmetric case: 4V+J<0. In the correlated hopping model, the three-body interaction should be negative for positive V. We also compare the predictions of this weak-coupling treatment with numerical exact results for the correlated-hopping model obtained by diagonalizing small chains, and using novel techniques to determine the opening of the spin gap.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure