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Phys. Rev. B 71, 184501 (2005) [11 pages]

Effects of fluctuations and Coulomb interaction on the transition temperature of granular superconductors

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I. S. Beloborodov1, K. B. Efetov2,3, A. V. Lopatin1, and V. M. Vinokur1
1Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
2Theoretische Physik III, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
3L. D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, 117940 Moscow, Russia

Received 2 September 2004; revised 22 November 2004; published 3 May 2005

We investigate the suppression of superconducting transition temperature in granular metallic systems due to (i) fluctuations of the order parameter (bosonic mechanism) and (ii) Coulomb repulsion (fermionic mechanism) assuming large tunneling conductance between the grains gT⪢1. We find the correction to the superconducting transition temperature for 3d granular samples and films. We demonstrate that if the critical temperature Tc>gTδ, where δ is the mean level spacing in a single grain, the bosonic mechanism is the dominant mechanism of the superconductivity suppression, while for critical temperatures Tc<gTδ the suppression of superconductivity is due to the fermionic mechanism.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.71.184501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevB.71.184501
PACS:
74.81.Bd, 74.78.Na, 73.40.Gk