Despite the quasiclassical methods being widely used for practical purposes, their
description is hard to find in the textbook literature. The review by Serene and
Rainer (1983) gives an introduction to the quasiclassical approach. The book by
Svidzinskii (1982) deals with the quasiclassical theory of static properties of
weak links. Applications of quasiclassical methods to various problems in
nonstationary superconductivity can only be found in original papers and
specialized reviews such as, for example, a review by Larkin and Ovchinnikov
(1986). The aim of the present book is to provide a basic knowledge of the
microscopic theory of nonstationary superconductivity including the most
advanced quasiclassical methods. We assume that the reader is familiar with the
main ideas of the BCS theory of superconductivity. There are many books on the
principles of the BCS theory, and we do not intend to give a comprehensive list of
them here. The personal preference of the author is with the book by de Gennes
(1966) which contains all the fundamentals which we would need to proceed with
the more recent microscopic theory.
We try to describe the quasiclassical method in such a way that a newcomer to
the field could learn it in a short time. First, we discuss stationary,
time-independent properties. We shall learn about the Green function, how to
find it for a particular superconducting state, and how to calculate the
superconducting properties once the Green function is known. The nonstationary
theory of superconductivity requires more efforts, which necessarily use
principles developed for stationary problems. In the theory of nonstationary
phenomena, the basic concept is the distribution function of excitations. The
specifics of superconductors is that the interaction of a superconductor with an
external electromagnetic field normally causes a considerable distortion of the
quasiparticle distribution on the energy scale relevant for the superconducting
parameters. As a result, the behavior of nonequilibrium excitations becomes one
of the most important factors which govern the response of the superconductor
to applied fields. This is why the problem of formulating the correct description of
the quasiparticle distribution is of the major concern throughout the book.
We consider several applications of both stationary and nonstationary
quasiclassical theory. For example, we derive and analyze the time-dependent
Ginzburg–Landau theory which is most frequently used to describe the dynamics
of superconductors. We demonstrate how powerful this theory is within certain
limits and, at the same time, we emphasize that it is far from being a complete
story about the kinetics of superconductors.
The great deal of attention is paid to the dynamics of vortices in the mixed state
of type II superconductors. There are two good reasons for the choice. First, it is
well established now that the dynamics of vortices controls almost all the
magnetic properties of type II superconductors, especially those of
high-temperature superconductors. It also determines hydrodynamics of
superfluids. Moreover, dynamics of superfluid vortices is now believed to have a
close relation to other fields of physics such as high energy physics and
cosmology (Achucarro and Vachaspati 2000, Shellard and Vilenkin 1994).
Second, the vortex dynamics has been the major interest of the author’s
research during many years, and it
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Kopnin, Nikolai, Senior Scientist, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of
Technology, and L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow
Theory of Nonequilibrium Superconductivity
Print ISBN 9780198507888, 2001
pp. [vi]
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