We study the thermodynamics of ultrasmall metallic grains with the mean level spacing comparable or larger than the pairing correlation energy in the whole range of temperatures. A complete picture of the thermodynamics in such systems is given taking into account the effects of disorder, parity and classical and quantum fluctuations. Both spin susceptibility and specific heat turn out to be sensitive probes to detect superconducting correlations in such samples.
We study the thermodynamics of ultrasmall metallic grains with level spacing $delta$ comparable or smaller than the pairing correlation energy, at finite temperatures, $T gsim delta$. We describe a method which allows to find quantum corrections to the effect of classical fluctuations. We present results for thermodynamic quantities in ordered grains and for the reentrant odd susceptibility in disordered grains.
We study the time evolution of a system of fermions with pairing interactions at a finite temperature. The dynamics is triggered by an abrupt increase of the BCS coupling constant. We show that if initially the fermions are in a normal phase, the amplitude of the BCS order parameter averaged over the Boltzman distribution of initial states exhibits damped oscillations with a relatively short decay time. The latter is determined by the temperature, the single-particle level spacing, and the ground state value of the BCS gap for the new coupling. In contrast, the decay is essentially absent when the system was in a superfluid phase before the coupling increase.
We solve the Ginzburg-Landau equation (GLE) for the mesoscopic superconducting thin film of the square shape in the magnetic field for the wide range of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter $0.05<kappa_{eff}<infty $. We found that the phase with the antivortex exists in the broad range of parameters. When the coherence length decreases the topological phase transition to the phase with the same total vorticity and a reduced symmetry takes place. The giant vortex with the vorticity $m=3$ is found to be unstable for any field, $xi /a$ and $kappa_{eff}ge 0.1$. Reduction of $ kappa _{eff}$ does not make the phase with antivortex more stable contrary to the case of the cylindric sample of the type I superconductor.
The discrete shell structure of vortex matter strongly influences the flux dynamics in mesoscopic superconducting Corbino disks. While the dynamical behavior is well understood in large and in very small disks, in the intermediate-size regime it occurs to be much more complex and unusual, due to (in)commensurability between the vortex shells. We demonstrate unconventional vortex dynamics (inversion of shell velocities with respect to the gradient driving force) and angular melting (propagating from the boundary where the shear stress is minimum, towards the center) in mesoscopic Corbino disks.
The fluctuating diamagnetic magnetization Mfl at constant field H as a function of temperature and the isothermal magnetization Mfl vs H are measured in MgB2, above the superconducting transition temperature. The expressions for Mfl in randomly oriented powders are derived in the Gaussian approximation of local Ginzburg-Landau theory and used for the analysis of the data. The scaled magnetization Mfl/H^{1/2}*T is found to be field dependent. In the limit of evanescent field the behaviour for Gaussian fluctuations is obeyed while for H>~ 100 Oe the field tends to suppress the fluctuating pairs, with a field dependence of Mfl close to the one expected when short wavelength fluctuations and non-local electrodynamic effects are taken into account. Our data, besides providing the isothermal magnetization curves for T>Tc(0) in a BCS-type superconductor such as MgB2, evidence an enhancement of the fluctuating diamagnetism which is related to the occurrence in this new superconductor of an anisotropic spectrum of the superconducting fluctuations.