Renormalization of competing interactions and superconductivity on small scales (Q2254899)

The authors consider mesoscopic systems of linear size and calculate the size-dependence of the relevant coupling constant and a physical quantity with the aim to check whether measurements of the magnetic susceptibility can yield some information about the net interaction. As an example, the orbital magnetic susceptibility of a mesoscopic diffusive normal metallic ring is considered, notably the persistent current, which flows in such a ring in response to an Aharonov-Bohm flux, which penetrates it. First, the authors obtain the main equation for the electron-electron interaction coupling from the theory of superconductivity, being repulsive or attractive, and it is used to derive the transition temperature or the space- and time-independent mean-field superconducting order parameter, which ignores both thermal and quantum fluctuation. The paper presents and employs quantitative results for a diffusive normal metallic ring, whose linear size exceeds the elastic mean-field path. The authors use the Thouless energy scale to represent the size-dependence of the magnetic response of the mesoscopic rings. They derive the superconductive fluctuation-induced partition function and obtain the effect of two competing interactions in the Cooper channel. This result is used to study the average scale-dependent persistent current of a large ensemble of metallic rings in the presence of these interactions in the diffusive regime. By considering the Hamiltonian of a single-particle part and a term describing local repulsion and attraction of coupling constants, the partition function corresponding to the Hamiltonian is calculated by the method of Feynman path integrals combined with the Grassmann algebra of many-body fermionic coherent states. After the renormalization due to the integration over the fermionic degrees of freedom, and after truncating the action at the quadratic order in the order parameters, the free energy ends up being a sum over Gaussian models, associated with ``order parameters'', which depends on a wave vector \(q\) and on a bosonic Matsubara frequency \(\nu\). Each of these models involves a different interaction strength, which depends on \(q\) and \(\nu\). These coupling coefficients are expressed in terms of the renormalization groups. Each of these energies renormalizes by an equation similar to the main equation. Then the explicit expressions are presented for the various contributions to the magnetic susceptibility coming from the various order parameters. The results confirm that the magnetic susceptibility may turn from diamagnetic to paramagnetic as the ring becomes smaller (i.e., when the Thouless energy increases). The exact place when this switch occurs depends on several parameters.