How many quasiparticles can be in a superconductor?
Anton Bespalov, Manuel Houzet, Julia S. Meyer, Yuli V. Nazarov
TL;DR
This paper investigates the persistent excess of quasiparticles in superconductors at low temperatures, revealing that the interplay between recombination and generation processes sets an upper limit on quasiparticle concentration.
Contribution
It introduces a model considering spatial gap fluctuations and non-equilibrium effects to explain the quasiparticle concentration limit in superconductors.
Findings
Quasiparticle concentration is bounded by a balance between recombination and generation.
Spatial gap fluctuations influence quasiparticle dynamics.
The model explains the experimentally observed excess quasiparticles.
Abstract
Experimentally and mysteriously, the concentration of quasiparticles in a gapped superconductor at low temperatures always by far exceeds its equilibrium value. We study the dynamics of localized quasiparticles in superconductors with a spatially fluctuating gap edge. The competition between phonon-induced quasiparticle recombination and generation by a weak non-equilibrium agent results in an upper bound for the concentration that explains the mystery.
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