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Physical Review

Theory of Many-Particle Systems. II. Superconductivity

Leo P. Kadanoff, Paul C. Martin

Published Nov 1, 1961• 315 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A fermion system with a simple attractive interaction is discussed with the aid of time-dependent correlation functions. Although perturbation theory is inapplicable, a sequence of correlation approximations described in the first paper of this series can be employed. The lowest approximation in the sequence expresses the two-particle correlation function in terms of single-particle functions and leads to the Hartree approximation; the second expresses three-particle correlation function in terms of one- and two-particle correlation functions and leads to the time-dependent correlation functions that characterize the super-conducting model of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer. In the second section of this paper these correlation functions are determined and the thermodynamic properties of the superconductor are calculated from them.In the third section of the paper, the electromagnetic effects of the superconductor predicted by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer time-dependent correlation functions are considered. Their unsatisfactory description of current conservation is indicated and overcome in the fourth section by a more accurate solution valid at nonvanishing temperature. This solution predicts different diffusive properties but the same Meissner effect and superconductive behavior, since the longitudinal current correlation function is modified while the transverse current correlation functions is not.The fifth section of the paper is devoted to the properties of a pure superconductor which depend on the lifetimes of the single-particle excitations. The effect of these lifetimes on the static electrical conductivity is determined, and it is shown that they do not destroy supercurrents although they eliminate a gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum. Their effect on the thermal conductivity is also calculated using heat current correlation functions. It is shown that a model which treats the lifetime of the single-particle excitation due to lattice interactions as constant yields results in agreement with observed thermal conductivities.

DOI
10.1103/physrev.124.670

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A fermion system with a simple attractive interaction is discussed with the aid of time-dependent correlation functions. Although perturbation theory is inapplicable, a sequence of correlation approximations described in the first paper of this series can be employed. The lowest approximation in the sequence expresses the two-particle correlation function in terms of single-particle functions and leads to the Hartree approximation; the second expresses three-particle correlation function in terms of one- and two-particle correlation functions and leads to the time-dependent correlation functions that characterize the super-conducting model of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer. In the second section of this paper these correlation functions are determined and the thermodynamic properties of the superconductor are calculated from them.In the third section of the paper, the electromagnetic effects of the superconductor predicted by the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer time-dependent correlation functions are considered. Their unsatisfactory description of current conservation is indicated and overcome in the fourth section by a more accurate solution valid at nonvanishing temperature. This solution predicts different diffusive properties but the same Meissner effect and superconductive behavior, since the longitudinal current correlation function is modified while the transverse current correlation functions is not.The fifth section of the paper is devoted to the properties of a pure superconductor which depend on the lifetimes of the single-particle excitations. The effect of these lifetimes on the static electrical conductivity is determined, and it is shown that they do not destroy supercurrents although they eliminate a gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum. Their effect on the thermal conductivity is also calculated using heat current correlation functions. It is shown that a model which treats the lifetime of the single-particle excitation due to lattice interactions as constant yields results in agreement with observed thermal conductivities.
This is the first of a series of papers dealing with many-particle systems from a unified, nonperturbative point of view. It contains derivations and discussions of various field-theoretical techniques which will be applied in subsequent papers. In a short introduction the general method of approach is summarized, and its relationship to other field-theoretic problems indicated. In the second section the macroscopic properties of the spectra of many-particle systems are described. Asymptotic evaluations are performed which characterize these macroscopic features in terms of intensive parameters, and the relationship of these parameters to thermodynamics is discussed. The special characteristics of the ground state are shown to follow as a limiting case of the asymptotic evaluations. The third section is devoted to the time-dependent field correlation functions, or Green's functions, which describe the microscopic behavior of a multiparticle system. These functions are defined, and related to intensive macroscopic variables when the energy and number of particles are large. Spectral representations and other properties of various one-particle Green's functions are derived. In the fourth section the treatment of non-equilibrium processes is considered. As a particular example, the electromagnetic properties of a system are expressed in terms of the special two-particle Green's function which describes current correlation. The discussion yields specifically a fluctuation-dissipation theorem, a sum rule for conductivity, and certain dispersion relations. The fifth section deals with the differential equations which determine the Green's functions. The boundary conditions that characterize the Green's function equations are exhibited without reference to adiabatic decoupling. A method for solving the equations approximately, by treating the correlations among successively larger numbers of particles, is considered. The first approximation in this sequence is shown to yield a generalized Hartree-like equation. A related, but rigorous, identity for the single-particle Green's function is then derived. A second approximation, which takes certain two-particle correlations into account, is shown to produce various additional effects: The interaction between particles is altered in a manner characterized by the intensive macroscopic parameters, and the modification and spread of the energy-momentum relation come into play. In the final section compact formal expressions for the Green's functions and other physical quantities are derived. Alternative equations and systematic approximations for the Green's functions are obtained.
Abstract One of the important steps leading to the successful formulation of the microscopic theory of superconductivity was the model calculation performed by Cooper (1956) which showed that two electrons, interacting above a filled Fermi sea, had a bound state in the presence of an arbitrarily weak attractive interaction. This chapter first examines Cooper’s calculation. The success of the Cooper model calculation in producing a bound state, with its implication that a proper many-body theory would contain a gap in the excitation spectrum, strongly suggests that the ground state wave function should be constructed from pairs of electrons. However, it is difficult to perform calculations using the many-body pair wave function from Cooper’s model. The chapter then introduces the wave function proposed by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) as an alternative.
We study the collective excitations of a system with local attractive interactions as a function of the coupling strength. The two-particle excitations are obtained in the random-phase approximation. For the strong-coupling limit we reproduce the excitation spectrum of a hard-core Bose gas, while in the weak-coupling limit we obtained a spectrum consistent with the BCS picture. The evolution of the excitation spectrum from the weak- to the strong-coupling limits is continuous. We briefly discuss the effect of these excitations in the thermodynamic properties of the system.
A nonperturbative argument is used to derive a one-electron Hamiltonian whose eigenfunctions are in one-to-one correspondence with electron or hole quasiparticles of an N-electron system. Nonlocal exchange is included exactly, and self-energy terms due to electronic correlation are included at the level of approximation of a given N-electron wave function. When parametrized by quasiparticle occupation numbers, this one-electron Hamiltonian is the functional derivative of an exact N-electron energy functional, as in the Landau theory of interacting fermion systems. The present nonperturbative derivation extends the Landau theory to ordered or localized systems for which many-body perturbation theory is not directly applicable. Analysis of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) reduced Hamiltonian for superconductors leads to a temperature-dependent energy gap and a transition temperature in good agreement with the BCS theory, in a formalism that conserves the number of electrons.
We present the current-density functional theory for the superconductor immersed in the magnetic field. The order parameter of the superconducting state, transverse component of the paramagnetic current-density, and electron density are chosen as basic variables that uniquely determine the equilibrium properties of the system. In order to construct this theory, the development of the approximate form of the exchange-correlation (xc) energy functional is indispensable as well as the derivation of the effective single-particle equation which makes it possible to reproduce the equilibrium densities mentioned above. The rigorous expression of the xc-energy functional is derived using the technique of the coupling-constant integration. Furthermore, the approximate form of the xc energy functional is proposed such that the energy gap resulting from the effective single-particle equation is consistent with the attractive interaction energy of the system.
We consider electron transport in a model of a spinless superconductor described by a Kitaev-type lattice Hamiltonian where the electron interactions are modeled through a superconducting pairing term. The superconductor is sandwiched between two normal metals that are kept at different temperatures and chemical potentials and that are themselves modeled as noninteracting spinless fermions. For this setup we compute the exact steady-state properties of the system using the quantum-Langevin-equation approach. Closed-form exact expressions for particle current, energy current, and other two-point correlations are obtained in the Landauer-type forms and involve two nonequilibrium Green's functions. The current expressions are found to be the sum of three terms having simple physical interpretations. We then discuss a numerical approach where we construct the time evolution of the two-point correlators of the system from the eigenspectrum of the complete quadratic Hamiltonian describing the system and leads. By starting from an initial state corresponding to the leads in thermal equilibrium and the system in an arbitrary state, the long-time solution for the correlations, before recurrence times, gives us steady-state properties. We use this independent numerical method for verifying the results of the exact solution. We also investigate analytically the presence of high-energy bound states and obtain expressions for their contributions to two-point correlators. As applications of our general formalism we present results on thermal conductance and on the conductance of a Kitaev chain with next-nearest-neighbor interactions which allows topological phases with different winding numbers.