Theory of dirty superconductors

✍ Scribed by P.W. Anderson

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1959
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 446 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-3697
• DOI: 10.1016/0022-3697(59)90036-8

✦ Synopsis

A B.C.S. type of theory (see Bardeen, Cooper and Schreiffer, Phys. Rev.
108, 1175 (1957)) is sketched for very dirty superconductors, where elastic scattering from physical and chemical impurities is large compared with the energy gap. This theory is based on pairing each one-electron state with its exact time reverse, a generalization of the k up, −k down pairing of the B.C.S. theory which is independent of such scattering. Such a theory has many qualitative and a few quantitative points of agreement with experiment, in particular with specific-heat data, energy-gap measurements, and transition-temperature versus impurity curves. Other types of pairing which have been suggested are not compatible with the existence of dirty superconductors.