We show that two-band superconductors harbor hidden criticality deep in the superconducting state, stemming from the critical temperature of the weaker band taken as an independent system. For sufficiently small interband coupling γ the coherence length of the weaker band exhibits a remarkable deviation from the conventional monotonic increase with temperature, namely, a pronounced peak close to the hidden critical point. The magnitude of the peak scales as ∝γ-μ, with the Landau critical exponent μ=1/3, the same as found for the mean-field critical behavior with respect to the source field in ferromagnets and ferroelectrics. Here reported hidden criticality of multiband superconductors can be experimentally observed by, e.g., imaging of the variations of the vortex core in a broader temperature range. Similar effects are expected for the superconducting multilayers.

Quantization of the transverse electron motion in high-quality superconducting metallic nanowires and nanofilms results in the formation of well-distinguished single-electron subbands. They shift in energy with changing thickness, which is known to cause quantum-size superconducting oscillations. The formation of multiple subbands results in a multigap structure induced by the interplay between quantum confinement and Andreev mechanism. We investigate multisubband superconductivity in a hollow nanocylinder by numerically solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. When changing the inner radius and thickness of the hollow nanocylinder, we find a crossover from an irregular pattern of quantum-size superconducting oscillations, typical of nanowires, to an almost regular regime, specific for superconducting nanofilms. At this crossover the multigap structure becomes degenerate. The ratio of the critical temperature to the energy gap increases and approaches its bulk value while being reduced by 20-30 % due to Andreev-type states driven by quantum confinement in the irregular regime.

To date, several experimental groups reported measurements of the thickness dependence of Tc of atomically uniform single-crystalline Pb nanofilms. The reported amplitude of the Tc-oscillations varies significantly from one experiment to another. Here we propose that the reason for this unresolved issue is an interplay of the quantum-size variations in the single-electron density of states with thickness-dependent oscillations in the phonon mediated electron-electron coupling. Such oscillations in the coupling depend on the substrate material, the quality of the interface, the protection cover and other details of the fabrication process, changing from one experiment to another. This explains why the available data do not exhibit one-voice consistency about the amplitude of the Tc-oscillations. Our analyses are based on a numerical solution of the Bogoliubovde Gennes equations for a superconducting slab.

Quantum confinement of the perpendicular motion of electrons in single-crystalline metallic superconducting nanofilms splits the conduction band into a series of single-electron subbands. A distinctive feature of such a nanoscale multi-band superconductor is that the energetic position of each subband can vary significantly with changing nanofilm thickness, substrate material, protective cover and other details of the fabrication process. It can occur that the bottom of one of the available subbands is situated in the vicinity of the Fermi level. We demonstrate that the character of the superconducting pairing in such a subband changes dramatically and exhibits a clear molecule-like trend, which is very similar to the well-known crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer regime to Bose-Einstein condensation (BCS-BEC) observed in trapped ultracold fermions. For Pb nanofilms with thicknesses of 4 and 5 monolayers (MLs) this will lead to a spectacular scenario: up to half of all the Cooper pairs nearly collapse, shrinking in the lateral size (parallel to the nanofilm) down to a few nanometers. As a result, the superconducting condensate will be a coherent mixture of almost molecule-like fermionic pairs with ordinary, extended Cooper pairs.

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In this paper, we investigate the spin and tunneling dynamics of a spin-orbit-coupled noninteracting Bose-Einstein condensate in a periodically driven non-Hermitian double-well potential. Under high-frequency driving, we obtain the effective time-averaged Hamiltonian by using the standard time-averaging method, and analytically calculate the Floquet quasienergies, revealing that the parity-time (PT)-breaking phase transition appears even for arbitrarily small non-Hermitian parameters when the spin-orbit coupling strength takes half-integer value, irrespective of the values of other parameters used. When the system is PT-symmetric with balanced gain and loss, we find numerically and analytically that in the broken PT-symmetric regions, there will exist the net spin current together with a vanishing atomic current, if we drop the contribution of the exponential growth of the norm to the current behaviors. When the system is non-PT-symmetric, though the quasienergies are partial complex, a stable net spin current can be generated by controlling the periodic driving field, which is accompanied by a spatial localization of the condensate in the well with gain. The results deepen the understanding of non-Hermitian physics and could be useful for engineering a variety of devices for spintronics.

A mesoscopic superconductor in the shape of a circular cone, and size of the order of the coherence length, is investigated theoretically. The external magnetic field is applied perpendicular to its circular basis, and vortex states are obtained in the framework of the Ginzburg-Landau theory. We find patterns made of giant vortex states ͑GVS͒, curved multivortex states ͑MVS͒, and a combination of both of them. The results are summarized in phase diagrams, where the GVS and MVS regimes are determined according to the applied field and geometric parameters. We find that superconductivity persists up to fields much larger than the upper critical field ͑H c2 ͒ in case of a very small apex angle. The results are relevant to understand the properties of superconducting tips, which are currently used in scanning tunneling microscopy, in the presence of an external applied field.