Why have no manifestations of the excitonic mechanism have been detected in Ginzburg sandwiches?

Abstract

The Ginzburg sandwich is a superconducting film coated with a dielectric layer containing Bose-type exitations, i.e. exitons. Using spatially inhomogeneous Eliashberg equations in the local interaction limit, an exact result for the superconducting transition temperature of the Ginzburg sandwich has been obtained in the first order in a/L (where a is interatomic distance and L is the film thickness). The result has been found to be independent of the exiton frequency. The exitonic mechanism appears only in the second order in a/L since both partners of the Cooper pair should enter a layer of thickness \sim a in order to interact through exchange of exitons. Numerical estimates indicate that manifestations of the exitonic mechanism are practically undetectable in systems with L>>a. Calculations for a narrow-gap and wide-gap dielectric have been performed and compared to experimental data.