Ginzburg-Landau Theory for Confined Thin-Film Superconductors

[2605.10686] Ginzburg-Landau Theory for Confined Thin-Film Superconductors Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Condensed Matter > Superconductivity arXiv:2605.10686 (cond-mat) [Submitted on 11 May 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 25 Aug 2026 (this version, v3)] Title: Ginzburg-Landau Theory for Confined Thin-Film Superconductors Authors: Giovanni A. Ummarino , Alessio Zaccone View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: We develop a Ginzburg-Landau theory for superconducting thin films under quantum confinement. Starting from the Ginzburg-Landau theory and the recently developed confinement theory of metallic thin films, explicit analytical expressions are derived for the coherence length, penetration depth, electronic mean free path, and Ginzburg-Landau parameter in confined geometries. The central result is that quantum confinement directly renormalizes the intrinsic superconducting coherence length through confinement-induced modifications of the electronic density of states and Fermi energy. This effect is absent in conventional thin-film transport theories based solely on surface scattering. As a consequence, confinement simultaneously suppresses the coherence length and enhances the penetration depth, thereby driving superconductors toward stronger type-II behavior over a broad thickness range. The interplay between quantum confinement and disorder can also produce reentrant type-I/type-II crossovers. The theory predicts a crossover regime in which confinement-induced renormalization of superconducting length scales and transport scattering become strongly intertwined. Comparison with recent penetration-depth measurements in Al thin films shows that the observed enhancement of the penetration depth originates from the interplay between confinement-induced renormalization of the coherence length and suppression of the effective mean free path by surface and disorder scattering. The results establish a direct connection between quantum confinement and superconducting electrodynamics in confined metallic films. Subjects: Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) ; Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.10686 [cond-mat.supr-con] (or arXiv:2605.10686v3 [cond-mat.supr-con] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.10686 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: Superconductor Science and Technology 39, 085029 (2026) Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6668/ae96d5 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Alessio Zaccone [ view email ] [v1] Mon, 11 May 2026 15:00:38 UTC (92 KB) [v2] Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:24 UTC (92 KB) [v3] Tue, 25 Aug 2026 09:30:16 UTC (189 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cond-mat.supr-con < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.dis-nn cond-mat.mes-hall cond-mat.mtrl-sci quant-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. 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