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Physical Review Letters

Energy of N Cooper Pairs by Analytically Solving the Richardson-Gaudin Equations for Conventional Superconductors

Michel Crouzeix, Monique Combescot

Published Dec 22, 2011• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This Letter provides the solution to a yet unsolved basic problem of solid state physics: the ground state energy of an arbitrary number of Cooper pairs interacting via the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer potential. We here break a 50 yr old math problem by analytically solving Richardson-Gaudin equations which give the exact energy of these N pairs via N parameters coupled through N nonlinear equations. Our result fully supports the standard BCS result obtained for a pair number equal to half the number of states feeling the potential. More importantly, it shows that the interaction part of the N-pair energy depends on N as N(N-1) only from N=1 to the dense regime, a result which evidences that Cooper pairs interact via Pauli blocking only.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.267001

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This Letter provides the solution to a yet unsolved basic problem of solid state physics: the ground state energy of an arbitrary number of Cooper pairs interacting via the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer potential. We here break a 50 yr old math problem by analytically solving Richardson-Gaudin equations which give the exact energy of these N pairs via N parameters coupled through N nonlinear equations. Our result fully supports the standard BCS result obtained for a pair number equal to half the number of states feeling the potential. More importantly, it shows that the interaction part of the N-pair energy depends on N as N(N-1) only from N=1 to the dense regime, a result which evidences that Cooper pairs interact via Pauli blocking only.
This Letter provides the solution to a yet unsolved basic problem of Solid State Physics: the ground state energy of an arbitrary number of Cooper pairs interacting via the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer potential. We here break a 50 year old math problem by analytically solving Richardson-Gaudin equations which give the exact energy of these NNN pairs via NNN parameters coupled through NNN non-linear equations. Our result fully supports the standard BCS result obtained for a pair number equal to half the number of states feeling the potential. More importantly, it shows that the interaction part of the NNN-pair energy depends on NNN as N(N−1)N(N-1)N(N−1) only from N=1 to the dense regime, a result which evidences that Cooper pairs interact via Pauli blocking only.
Chapter 10 deals with the exact solution to the BCS problem, as obtained by analytically solving Richardson-Gaudin equations. The chapter first provides a simple derivation of these equations and shows how to solve them for arbitrary N. The explicit N dependence of the N–Cooper pair energy obtained from this resolution provides invaluable insights into the role of the Pauli exclusion principle in paired fermion systems because the reduced BCS potential does not directly act between Cooper pairs. Revelation of this subtle point makes it possible to understand (i) why Cooper pairs can strongly overlap without breaking, whereas, at large density, an exciton system dissociates into an electron-hole plasma, and (ii) why the gap energy is far larger than the average pair energy. This understanding is further supported by the Cooper pair many-body parameter, which has the same form as the ones for Wannier or Frenkel excitons do.
While the one-Cooper-pair problem is now a textbook exercise, the energy of two pairs of electrons with opposite spins and zero total momentum has not been derived yet, the exact handling of Pauli blocking between bound pairs being not that easy for N=2N=2N=2 already. The two-Cooper-pair problem however is quite enlightening to understand the very peculiar role played by the Pauli exclusion principle in superconductivity. Pauli blocking is known to drive the change from 1 to NNN pairs but no precise description of this continuous change has been given so far. Using Richardson's procedure, we here prove that Pauli blocking increases the free part of the two-pair ground-state energy but decreases the binding part when compared to two isolated pairs---the excitation gap to break a pair however increasing from one to two pairs. When extrapolated to the dense BCS regime, the decrease in the pair binding while the gap increases strongly indicates that at odd with common belief, the average pair binding energy cannot be on the order of the gap.
We use Richardson-Gaudin exact equations to derive the ground-state energy of NNN composite bosons (cobosons) interacting via a potential which acts between fermion pairs having zero center-of-mass momentum, that is, a potential similar to the reduced BCS potential used in conventional superconductivity. Through a density expansion, we show that while for two-dimensional (2D) systems, the NNN-coboson correlation energy undergoes a surprising cancellation which leaves the interaction part with an $N(N\ensuremath{-}1)$ dependence only, such a cancellation does not exist in 1D, 3D, or 4D systems (which correspond to 2D parabolic traps) nor when the cobosons interact via a similar short-range potential but between pairs having an arbitrary center-of-mass momentum. This shows that the previously found cancellation which exists for the Cooper-pair correlation energy results not only from the very peculiar form of the reduced BCS potential, but also from a quite mysterious dimensionality effect, the density of states for Cooper pairs feeling the BCS potential being essentially constant, as for 2D systems.
Remarkably the one-dimensional (1D) many-fermion fluid with pairwise-attractive \ensuremath{\delta}-function interactions is exactly solvable in that one can determine the exact many-body ground-state energy and chemical potential for all values of the coupling strength and/or density. Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory is tested in this model by numerically determining the BCS total ground-state energy and chemical potential as a function of the coupling strength and/or density, and comparing with the exact results. As is the case for 2D and 3D theories, two regimes are apparent: (a) a BCS-proper regime of weakly coupled, overlapping Cooper pairs and (b) a Bose-gas regime of strongly interacting fermions which pair to form an ideal Bose gas at low density. In the two extremes the BCS energy and chemical potential are identical to the exact values and are moderately close for intermediate coupling and/or density.
Analytic expressions for the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) gap of a many-electron system with the BCS model interaction are obtained in one, two, and three dimensions in the weak coupling limit, but for arbitrary interaction width ν≡ℏωD/EF, 0<ν<∞. Here ℏωD is the maximum energy of a force-mediating boson, and EF is the Fermi energy (which is fixed by the electronic density). Our results address both phononic (ν≪1) as well as nonphononic (e.g., exciton, magnon, plasmon, etc.) pairing mechanisms where the mediating boson energies are not small compared with EF, provided weak electron–boson coupling prevails. The essential singularity in coupling, sometimes erroneously attributed to the two-dimensional character of the BCS model interaction with ν≪1, is shown to appear in one, two, and three dimensions before the limit ν→0 is taken.