Specific heat of a BCS superconductor

✍ Scribed by Richard A. Ferrell

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 501 KB
• Volume: 505
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-3804
• DOI: 10.1002/andp.19935050305

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

By expressing the free energy as an appropriate temperature integration over the square of the BCS energy gap function and by substituting simple but accurate analytic expressions for the latter, corresponding expressions are obtained for the specific heat in the superconducting state. In the upper portion of the temperature range, the ratio of the specific heats in the superconducting and normal states is 2.43 (1 + 0.936 in t), to better than one per cent accuracy, where t is the reduced temperature. Thus, the semilog plot of temperature versus the ratio of specific heat to temperature is a straight line over a large portion of one decade of specific heat. Corresponding expressions of similar simplicity and accuracy are obtained for the middle and low temperature ranges.