On themomagnetic effects due to the supeconducting fluctuations: Reply to arXiv:1012.4361 by Serbyn, Skvortsov, and Varlamov

TL;DR

This paper defends previous findings on thermomagnetic effects in superconductors, clarifying that the correction to the heat current vertex does not imply a large electric current correction, thus reaffirming the original results.

Contribution

The authors provide a detailed rebuttal showing that their earlier calculations of thermomagnetic effects remain valid despite criticisms regarding vertex corrections.

Findings

Their calculations of heat current vertices are correct.

The large thermomagnetic effect proposed by critics is not supported by their analysis.

Their results confirm the dominance of thermomagnetic effects near T_c in superconductors.

Abstract

In a recent Reply [arXiv:1012.4361] to our Comment [arXiv:0906.2389, accepted to PRL], Serbyn, Skvortsov, and Varlamov raised a question of microscopic description, which we did not touch in Comment, and criticized our work [Phys. Rev. B 77, 064501 (2008)]. They hopefully agreed with one of our key result that the effective heat current vertex for fluctuating Cooper pairs (the Aslamzov-Larkin block in the diagram technique) is modified in the magnetic field, so "the heat current is proportional to the gauge-invariant momentum". However, they stated that we have overlooked the same correction to the electric current vertex and in this way we lost their huge thermomagnetic effect that does not require any particle-hole asymmetry and, therefore, prevails over the ordinary thermomagnetic effects by at least five orders in magnitude in ordinary superconductors near T_c and strongly dominates in the temperature range up to ~ 100 T_c. Here we address their criticism with all details and show that our calculations are correct.