Nonequilibrium theory of tunneling into a localized state in a superconductor
A single static magnetic impurity in a fully gapped superconductor leads to the formation of an intragap quasiparticle bound state. At temperatures much below the superconducting transition, the energy relaxation and spin dephasing of the state are expected to be exponentially suppressed. The presence of such a state can be detected in electron tunneling experiments as a pair of conductance peaks at positive and negative biases. Here we show that, for an arbitrarily weak tunneling strength, the peaks have to be symmetric with respect to the applied bias. This is in contrast to the standard result in which the tunneling conductance is proportional to the local (in general, particle-hole asymmetric) density of states. The asymmetry can be recovered if one allows for either a finite density of impurity states, or if impurities are coupled to another, nonsuperconducting, equilibrium bath.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1357062
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. B, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, Vol. 90, Issue 10; ISSN 1098-0121
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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