Low-temperature dissipative conductivity of superconductors with paramagnetic impurities

TL;DR

This paper explores how magnetic impurities in s-wave superconductors lead to a novel low-temperature dissipative conductivity mechanism driven by interactions between electromagnetic waves and localized spins, influenced by supercurrents and magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a new mechanism of electromagnetic interaction with localized spins in disordered superconductors, revealing how supercurrents induce a nonzero low-frequency dissipative conductivity.

Findings

Low-frequency dissipative conductivity saturates to a nonzero value.

Supercurrents induce a time-dependent exchange field affecting localized spins.

Presence of a DC magnetic field enhances magnetoconductance.

Abstract

In s-wave superconductors with a small concentration of magnetic impurities, the only electronic excitations that remain available at low temperatures are the excitations of the system of localized spins. We discuss a new mechanism of interaction between electromagnetic waves and the localized spins in disordered superconductors. A supercurrent induces randomly distributed spin density of the itinerant electrons, which couples to the impurity spins by exchange interaction. Acceleration of the Cooper pair condensate by the external AC electric field of frequency $\omega$ creates a strong, time-dependent exchange field acting on the localized spins, which is inversely proportional to $\omega$. As a result, the low-frequency dissipative part of the conductivity saturates to a nonzero value. We use the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to evaluate the spectrum of equilibrium current fluctuations associated with the fluctuation in the spin subsystem. We also predict that in the presence of a DC magnetic field parallel to the superconducting film, the system of spins exhibits a large positive magnetoconductance.