Keldysh action for disordered superconductors

M. V. Feigel’man; A. I. Larkin; M. A. Skvortsov

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.61.12361

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Keldysh action for disordered superconductors

M. V. Feigel’man, A. I. Larkin, M. A. Skvortsov

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.61.12361 · Physical Review B

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Abstract

The Keldysh representation of the functional integral for the interacting electron system with disorder is used to derive microscopically an effective action for dirty superconductors. In the most general case this action is a functional of the 8×8 matrix Q(t,t′) which depends on two time variables, and on the fluctuating order parameter field and electric potential. We show that this approach reproduces, without the use of the replica trick, the well-known result for the Coulomb-induced renormalization of the electron-electron coupling constant in the Cooper channel. Turning to the results, we calculate the effects of the Coulomb interaction upon (i) the subgap Andreev conductance between the superconductor and the two-dimensional dirty normal metal, and (ii) the Josephson proximity coupling between superconductive islands via such a metal. These quantities are shown to be strongly suppressed by the Coulomb interaction at sufficiently low temperatures due to both zero-bias anomaly in the density of states and disorder-enhanced repulsion in the Cooper channel.