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Register a new userCollective energy gap of preformed Cooper-pairs in disordered superconductors
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In most superconductors the transition to the superconducting state is driven by the binding of electrons into Cooper-pairs. The condensation of these pairs into a single, phase coherent, quantum state takes place concomitantly with their formation at the transition temperature, $T_c$. A different scenario occurs in some disordered, amorphous, superconductors: Instead of a pairing-driven transition, incoherent Cooper pairs first pre-form above $T_c$, causing the opening of a pseudogap, and then, at $T_c$, condense into the phase coherent superconducting state. Such a two-step scenario implies the existence of a new energy scale, $Delta_{c}$, driving the collective superconducting transition of the preformed pairs. Here we unveil this energy scale by means of Andreev spectroscopy in superconducting thin films of amorphous indium oxide. We observe two Andreev conductance peaks at $pm Delta_{c}$ that develop only below $T_c$ and for highly disordered films on the verge of the transition to insulator. Our findings demonstrate that amorphous superconducting films provide prototypical disordered quantum systems to explore the collective superfluid transition of preformed Cooper-pairs pairs.
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We study conditions for the emergence of the preformed Cooper pairs in materials hosting flat bands. As a particular example, we consider time-reversal symmetric pseudospin-1 semimetal, with a pair of three-band crossing points at which a flat band intersects with a Dirac cone, and focus on the s-wave inter-node pairing channel. The nearly dispersionless nature of the flat band promotes local Cooper pair formation so that the system can be considered as an array of superconducting grains. Due to dispersive bands, Andreev scattering between the grains gives rise to the global phase-coherent superconductivity at low temperatures. We develop a theory to calculate transition temperature between the preformed Cooper pair state and the phase-coherent state for different interaction strengths in the Cooper channel.
Superconductivity arises from two distinct quantum phenomena: electron pairing and long-range phase coherence. In conventional superconductors, the two quantum phenomena generally take place simultaneously, while the electron pairing occurs at higher temperature than the long-range phase coherence in the underdoped high-Tc cuprate superconductors. Recently, whether electron pairing is also prior to long-range phase coherence in single-layer FeSe film on SrTiO3 substrate is under debate. Here, by measuring Knight shift and nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate, we unambiguously reveal a pseudogap behavior below Tp ~ 60 K in two layered FeSe-based superconductors with quasi-two-dimension. In the pseudogap regime, a weak diamagnetic signal and a remarkable Nernst effect are also observed, which indicate that the observed pseudogap behavior is related to superconducting fluctuations. These works confirm that strong phase fluctuation is an important character in the two-dimensional iron-based superconductors as widely observed in high-Tc cuprate superconductors.
Angle-resolved photoemission on underdoped La$_{1.895}$Sr$_{0.105}$CuO$_4$ reveals that in the pseudogap phase, the dispersion has two branches located above and below the Fermi level with a minimum at the Fermi momentum. This is characteristic of the Bogoliubov dispersion in the superconducting state. We also observe that the superconducting and pseudogaps have the same d-wave form with the same amplitude. Our observations provide direct evidence for preformed Cooper pairs, implying that the pseudogap phase is a precursor to superconductivity.
It is analyzed what fundamental new information for the properties of the superconductors can be obtained by systematic investigation of the Bernoulli effect. It is shown that it is a tool to determine the effective mass of Cooper pairs, the volume density of charge carriers, the temperature dependence of the penetration depth and condensation energy. The theoretical results for disordered and anisotropic gap superconductors are systematized for this aim. For clean-anisotropic-gap superconductors is presented a simple derivation for the temperature dependence of the penetration depth
The idea that preformed Cooper pairs could exist in a superconductor above its zero-resistance state has been explored for unconventional, interface, and disordered superconductors, yet direct experimental evidence is lacking. Here, we use scanning tunneling noise spectroscopy to unambiguously show that preformed Cooper pairs exist up to temperatures much higher than the zero-resistance critical temperature $T_{C}$ in the disordered superconductor titanium nitride, by observing a clear enhancement in the shot noise that is equivalent to a change of the effective charge from 1 to 2 electron charges. We further show that spectroscopic gap fills up rather than closes when increasing temperature. Our results thus demonstrate the existence of a novel state above $T_{C}$ that, much like an ordinary metal, has no (pseudo)gap, but carries charge via paired electrons.
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