Parity Effect in a Small Superconducting Particle

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates the parity effect on the ground state energy of small superconducting particles, bridging the gap between previously studied regimes where level spacing is either much larger or smaller than the bulk gap.

Contribution

It extends prior theoretical work by performing numerical calculations in the intermediate regime where level spacing is comparable to the bulk gap.

Findings

Numerical results confirm the parity effect in the intermediate regime.

The study provides a continuous understanding across different level spacing regimes.

Results align with and extend previous analytical predictions.

Abstract

Matveev and Larkin calculated the parity effect on the ground state energy of a small superconducting particle in the regimes where the mean level spacing is either large or small compared to the bulk gap. We perform a numerical calculation which extends their results into the intermediate regime, where the level spacing is of the same order as the bulk gap.