Granulated superconductors:from the nonlinear sigma model to the Bose-Hubbard description

Abstract

We modify a nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) for the description of a granulated disordered system in the presence of both the Coulomb repulsion and the Cooper pairing. We show that under certain controlled approximations this model is reduced to the Bose-Hubbard (or ``dirty-boson'') model with renormalized coupling constants. We obtain a more general effective action (which is still simpler than the full NLSM action) which can be applied in the region of parameters where the reduction to the Bose-Hubbard model is not justified. This action may lead to a different picture of the superconductor-insulator transition in 2D systems.