11,117 research outputs found
Correcting 100 years of misunderstanding: electric fields in superconductors, hole superconductivity, and the Meissner effect
From the outset of superconductivity research it was assumed that no
electrostatic fields could exist inside superconductors, and this assumption
was incorporated into conventional London electrodynamics. Yet the London
brothers themselves initially (in 1935) had proposed an electrodynamic theory
of superconductors that allowed for static electric fields in their interior,
which they unfortunately discarded a year later. I argue that the Meissner
effect in superconductors necessitates the existence of an electrostatic field
in their interior, originating in the expulsion of negative charge from the
interior to the surface when a metal becomes superconducting. The theory of
hole superconductivity predicts this physics, and associated with it a
macroscopic spin current in the ground state of superconductors ("Spin Meissner
effect"), qualitatively different from what is predicted by conventional
BCS-London theory. A new London-like electrodynamic description of
superconductors is proposed to describe this physics. Within this theory
superconductivity is driven by lowering of quantum kinetic energy, the fact
that the Coulomb repulsion strongly depends on the character of the charge
carriers, namely whether electron- or hole-like, and the spin-orbit
interaction. The electron-phonon interaction does not play a significant role,
yet the existence of an isotope effect in many superconductors is easily
understood. In the strong coupling regime the theory appears to favor local
charge inhomogeneity. The theory is proposed to apply to all superconducting
materials, from the elements to the high cuprates and pnictides, is
highly falsifiable, and explains a wide variety of experimental observations.Comment: Proceedings of the conference "Quantum phenomena in complex matter
2011 - Stripes 2011", Rome, 10 July -16 July 2011, to be published in J.
Supercond. Nov. Mag
Anderson's "Theorem" and Bogoliubov-de Gennes Equations for Surfaces and Impurities
In order to incorporate spatial inhomogeneity due to nonmagnetic impurities,
Anderson [1] proposed a BCS-type theory in which single-particle states in such
an inhomogeneous system are used. We examine Anderson's proposal, in comparison
with the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, for the attractive Hubbard model on a
system with surfaces and impurities.
[1] P. W. Anderson, J. Phys. Chem. Solids {\bf 11}, 26 (1959).Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Physica C for M2S-HTSC-VI
Proceeding
Towards an understanding of hole superconductivity
From the very beginning K. Alex M\"uller emphasized that the materials he and
George Bednorz discovered in 1986 were superconductors. Here I would
like to share with him and others what I believe to be key reason for why
high cuprates as well as all other superconductors are hole
superconductors, which I only came to understand a few months ago. This paper
is dedicated to Alex M\"uller on the occasion of his 90th birthday.Comment: Dedicated to Alex M\"uller on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday.
arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1703.0977
Superconductivity from Undressing. II. Single Particle Green's Function and Photoemission in Cuprates
Experimental evidence indicates that the superconducting transition in high
cuprates is an 'undressing' transition. Microscopic mechanisms giving
rise to this physics were discussed in the first paper of this series. Here we
discuss the calculation of the single particle Green's function and spectral
function for Hamiltonians describing undressing transitions in the normal and
superconducting states. A single parameter, , describes the strength
of the undressing process and drives the transition to superconductivity. In
the normal state, the spectral function evolves from predominantly incoherent
to partly coherent as the hole concentration increases. In the superconducting
state, the 'normal' Green's function acquires a contribution from the anomalous
Green's function when is non-zero; the resulting contribution to
the spectral function is for hole extraction and for hole
injection. It is proposed that these results explain the observation of sharp
quasiparticle states in the superconducting state of cuprates along the
direction and their absence along the direction.Comment: figures have been condensed in fewer pages for easier readin
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 -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.
R-parity Conserving Supersymmetry, Neutrino Mass and Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay
We consider contributions of R-parity conserving softly broken supersymmetry
(SUSY) to neutrinoless double beta (\znbb) decay via the (B-L)-violating
sneutrino mass term. The latter is a generic ingredient of any weak-scale SUSY
model with a Majorana neutrino mass. The new R-parity conserving SUSY
contributions to \znbb are realized at the level of box diagrams. We derive
the effective Lagrangian describing the SUSY-box mechanism of \znbb-decay and
the corresponding nuclear matrix elements. The 1-loop sneutrino contribution to
the Majorana neutrino mass is also derived.
Given the data on the \znbb-decay half-life of Ge and the neutrino
mass we obtain constraints on the (B-L)-violating sneutrino mass. These
constraints leave room for accelerator searches for certain manifestations of
the 2nd and 3rd generation (B-L)-violating sneutrino mass term, but are most
probably too tight for first generation (B-L)-violating sneutrino masses to be
searched for directly.Comment: LATEX, 29 pages + 4 (uuencoded) figures appende
Electronic dynamic Hubbard model: exact diagonalization study
A model to describe electronic correlations in energy bands is considered.
The model is a generalization of the conventional Hubbard model that allows for
the fact that the wavefunction for two electrons occupying the same Wannier
orbital is different from the product of single electron wavefunctions. We
diagonalize the Hamiltonian exactly on a four-site cluster and study its
properties as function of band filling. The quasiparticle weight is found to
decrease and the quasiparticle effective mass to increase as the electronic
band filling increases, and spectral weight in one- and two-particle spectral
functions is transfered from low to high frequencies as the band filling
increases. Quasiparticles at the Fermi energy are found to be more 'dressed'
when the Fermi level is in the upper half of the band (hole carriers) than when
it is in the lower half of the band (electron carriers). The effective
interaction between carriers is found to be strongly dependent on band filling
becoming less repulsive as the band filling increases, and attractive near the
top of the band in certain parameter ranges. The effective interaction is most
attractive when the single hole carriers are most heavily dressed, and in the
parameter regime where the effective interaction is attractive, hole carriers
are found to 'undress', hence become more like electrons, when they pair. It is
proposed that these are generic properties of electronic energy bands in solids
that reflect a fundamental electron-hole asymmetry of condensed matter. The
relation of these results to the understanding of superconductivity in solids
is discussed.Comment: Small changes following referee's comment
Superconductivity from Undressing
Photoemission experiments in high cuprates indicate that quasiparticles
are heavily 'dressed' in the normal state, particularly in the low doping
regime. Furthermore these experiments show that a gradual undressing occurs
both in the normal state as the system is doped and the carrier concentration
increases, as well as at fixed carrier concentration as the temperature is
lowered and the system becomes superconducting. A similar picture can be
inferred from optical experiments. It is argued that these experiments can be
simply understood with the single assumption that the quasiparticle dressing is
a function of the local carrier concentration. Microscopic Hamiltonians
describing this physics are discussed. The undressing process manifests itself
in both the one-particle and two-particle Green's functions, hence leads to
observable consequences in photoemission and optical experiments respectively.
An essential consequence of this phenomenology is that the microscopic
Hamiltonians describing it break electron-hole symmetry: these Hamiltonians
predict that superconductivity will only occur for carriers with hole-like
character, as proposed in the theory of hole superconductivity
Nuclear deformation and neutrinoless double- decay of Zr, Mo, Ru, Pd, Te and Nd nuclei in mass mechanism
The decay of Zr, Mo,
Ru, Pd, Te and Nd isotopes for the
transition is studied in the Projected Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov
framework. In our earlier work, the reliability of HFB intrinsic wave functions
participating in the decay of the above mentioned nuclei
has been established by obtaining an overall agreement between the
theoretically calculated spectroscopic properties, namely yrast spectra,
reduced : transition probabilities, quadrupole moments
, gyromagnetic factors as well as half-lives
for the transition and the available
experimental data. In the present work, we study the decay for the transition in the mass mechanism
and extract limits on effective mass of light as well as heavy neutrinos from
the observed half-lives using nuclear
transition matrix elements calculated with the same set of wave functions.
Further, the effect of deformation on the nuclear transition matrix elements
required to study the decay in the mass
mechanism is investigated. It is noticed that the deformation effect on nuclear
transition matrix elements is of approximately same magnitude in and decay.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur
Metamagnetism in the 2D Hubbard Model with easy axis
Although the Hubbard model is widely investigated, there are surprisingly few
attempts to study the behavior of such a model in an external magnetic field.
Using the Projector Quantum Monte Carlo technique, we show that the Hubbard
model with an easy axis exhibits metamagnetic behavior if an external field is
turned on. For the case of intermediate correlations strength , we observe a
smooth transition from an antiferromagnetic regime to a paramagnetic phase.
While the staggered magnetization will decrease linearly up to a critical field
, uniform magnetization develops only for fields higher than .Comment: RevTeX 5 pages + 2 postscript figures (included), accepted for PRB
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