Proximity Action theory of superconductive nanostructures

We review a novel approach to the superconductive proximity effect in disordered normal-superconducting (N-S) structures. The method is based on the multicharge Keldysh action and is suitable for the treatment of interaction and fluctuation effects. As an application of the formalism, we study the subgap conductance and noise in two-dimensional N-S systems in the presence of the electron-electron interaction in the Cooper channel. It is shown that singular nature of the interaction correction at large scales leads to a nonmonotonuos temperature, voltage and magnetic field dependence of the Andreev conductance.Comment: RevTeX, 6 pages, 5 eps figures. This is a concise review of cond-mat/0008463; to be published in the Proceedings of the conference "Mesoscopic and strongly correlated electron systems" (Chernogolovka, Russia, July 2000

Development of detector active element based on thgem

A thick gas electron multiplier is considered for radiation-hard detectors (hadron calorimeter). There was carried out technological and design study to optimize the element structure. The measurements results and the next plans are presented.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figure

Dyson-Maleev representation of nonlinear sigma-models

For nonlinear sigma-models in the unitary symmetry class, the non-linear target space can be parameterized with cubic polynomials. This choice of coordinates has been known previously as the Dyson-Maleev parameterization for spin systems, and we show that it can be applied to a wide range of sigma-models. The practical use of this parameterization includes simplification of diagrammatic calculations (in perturbative methods) and of algebraic manipulations (in non-perturbative approaches). We illustrate the use and specific issues of the Dyson-Maleev parameterization with three examples: the Keldysh sigma-model for time-dependent random Hamiltonians, the supersymmetric sigma-model for random matrices, and the supersymmetric transfer-matrix technique for quasi-one-dimensional disordered wires. We demonstrate that nonlinear sigma-models of unitary-like symmetry classes C and B/D also admit the Dyson-Maleev parameterization.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur