Superconductivity in High Magnetic Field:Excitation Spectrum and Tunneling Properties

Abstract

The quasiparticle excitation spectrum of a type-II superconductor placed in high magnetic field is shown to be gapless. The gap turns to zero at the points in the MBZ which are in correspondence with the vortex lattice in real space. When the field decreases below certain critical value, branch crossing occur and gaps starts opening up at the Fermi surface.The strong dispersion around gapless points leads to algebraic temperature dependence in the thermodynamic functions and the algebraic voltage dependence in the tunneling conductance between the microscope tip and superconductor in an STM experiment.