Precursory Cooper Flow in Ultralow-Temperature Superconductors

Abstract

Superconductivity at low temperature -- observed in lithium and bismuth, as well as in various low-density superconductors -- calls for developing reliable theoretical and experimental tools for predicting ultralow critical temperatures, $T_c$, of Cooper instability in a system demonstrating nothing but normal Fermi liquid behavior in a broad range of temperatures below the Fermi energy, $T_{\rm F}$. Equally important are controlled predictions of stability in a given Cooper channel. We identify such a protocol within the paradigm of precursory Cooper flow -- a universal ansatz describing logarithmically slow temperature evolution of the linear response of the normal state to the pair-creating perturbation. Applying this framework to the two-dimensional uniform electron gas, we reveal a series of exotic superconducting states, pushing controlled theoretical predictions of $T_c$ to the unprecedentedly low scale of $10^{-100} T_{\rm F}$.