Boundary Superconductivity in the BCS Model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how boundaries affect the critical temperature in the BCS model, showing that boundaries can increase the critical temperature and cause Cooper pairs to localize near the boundary, especially at weak coupling.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous analysis of boundary effects on the BCS critical temperature, revealing localization phenomena not captured by traditional Ginzburg-Landau models.

Findings

Critical temperature exceeds bulk value near boundaries at weak coupling.

Cooper-pair wave function localizes near the boundary.

Relative shift in critical temperature vanishes at extreme coupling limits.

Abstract

We consider the linear BCS equation, determining the BCS critical temperature, in the presence of a boundary, where Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed. In the one-dimensional case with point interactions, we prove that the critical temperature is strictly larger than the bulk value, at least at weak coupling. In particular, the Cooper-pair wave function localizes near the boundary, an effect that cannot be modeled by effective Neumann boundary conditions on the order parameter as often imposed in Ginzburg-Landau theory. We also show that the relative shift in critical temperature vanishes if the coupling constant either goes to zero or to infinity.