21 research outputs found
Superconductors with Magnetic Impurities: Instantons and Sub-gap States
When subject to a weak magnetic impurity potential, the order parameter and
quasi-particle energy gap of a bulk singlet superconductor are suppressed.
According to the conventional mean-field theory of Abrikosov and Gor'kov, the
integrity of the energy gap is maintained up to a critical concentration of
magnetic impurities. In this paper, a field theoretic approach is developed to
critically analyze the validity of the mean field theory. Using the
supersymmetry technique we find a spatially homogeneous saddle-point that
reproduces the Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory, and identify instanton contributions
to the density of states that render the quasi-particle energy gap soft at any
non-zero magnetic impurity concentration. The sub-gap states are associated
with supersymmetry broken field configurations of the action. An analysis of
fluctuations around these configurations shows how the underlying supersymmetry
of the action is restored by zero modes. An estimate of the density of states
is given for all dimensionalities. To illustrate the universality of the
present scheme we apply the same method to study `gap fluctuations' in a normal
quantum dot coupled to a superconducting terminal. Using the same instanton
approach, we recover the universal result recently proposed by Vavilov et al.
Finally, we emphasize the universality of the present scheme for the
description of gap fluctuations in d-dimensional superconducting/normal
structures.Comment: 18 pages, 9 eps figure
Cosmological Constraints on Decaying Dark Matter
We present a complete analysis of the cosmological constraints on decaying
dark matter. Previous analyses have used the cosmic microwave background and
Type Ia supernova. We have updated them with the latest data as well as
extended the analysis with the inclusion of Lyman- forest, large scale
structure and weak lensing observations. Astrophysical constraints are not
considered in the present paper. The bounds on the lifetime of decaying dark
matter are dominated by either the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect for
the scenario with weak reionization, or CMB polarization observations when
there is significant reionization. For the respective scenarios, the lifetimes
for decaying dark matter are Gyr and Gyr (at 95.4% confidence level), where the
phenomenological parameter is the fraction of the decay energy deposited in
baryonic gas. This allows us to constrain particle physics models with dark
matter candidates through investigation of dark matter decays into Standard
Model particles via effective operators. For decaying dark matter of
GeV mass, we found that the size of the coupling constant in the effective
dimension-4 operators responsible for dark matter decay has to generically be . We have also explored the implications of our analysis for
representative models in theories of gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking,
minimal supergravity and little Higgs.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures. Added references and corrected typos as well as
grammatical oversight