Tuning of quantum entanglement of a superconductor by Transition-metal and Rare-earth impurity effect and the role of potential scattering on quantum phase transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates how transition-metal and rare-earth impurities influence quantum entanglement and phase transitions in superconductors, revealing new quantum phase transitions and the role of potential scattering in tuning quantum correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of impurity effects on quantum entanglement and phase transitions in superconductors using the Shiba-Rusinov and Abrikosov-Gor'kov models, highlighting the role of potential scattering.

Findings

Discovery of new quantum phase transitions induced by impurities.

Quantum entanglement can be tuned without large potential scattering.

Impurities influence the stability and quantum correlations in superconductors.

Abstract

By considering transition-metal (Shiba-Rusinov model) and rare-earth metal impurities (Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory) effect on a many-body system, i.e., a BCS s-wave superconductor, quantum bipartite entanglement of two electrons of the Cooper pairs in terms of the exchange interaction, J, the potential scattering, V (contrary to expectations playing an important role), and the distance of two electron spins of the Cooper pair is calculated at zero temperature by using two-electron spin-space density matrix (Werner state). In transition-metal case, we found new quantum phase transitions (QPTs). The changes of J, which causes to have localized excited state, V and the pair interaction (via energy gap) lead to the displacement of the QPTs (interactions act in the same direction, however sometimes the pair interaction causes the competition with other interactions), regardless of their effects on the value of concurrence. To have the turning point, which is a QPT point, by the reduction of |J|, the system doesn't need to have the large V. For non-magnetic and magnetic (rare-earth) impurity cases, the concurrence versus the distance and collision times is discussed for all finite and infinite Debye frequency. The quantum correlation, instability of the system and what's more important QPT can be tuned by impurity.