Cavity-control of the Ginzburg-Landau stiffness in superconductors

Vadim Plastovets; Francesco Piazza

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arXiv · 2506.06140

Cavity-control of the Ginzburg-Landau stiffness in superconductors

Vadim Plastovets·Francesco Piazza

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Abstract

Confining light around solids via cavities enhances the coupling between the electromagnetic fluctuations and the matter. We predict that in superconductors this cavity-enhanced coupling enables the control of the order-parameter stiffness, which governs key length scales such as the coherence length of Cooper pairs and the magnetic penetration depth. We explain this as a renormalization of the Cooper-pair kinetic mass caused by photon-mediated repulsive interactions between the electrons building the pair. This effect is generic for Bardeen-Cooper-Schriffer superconductors and is most pronounced in low-$T_c$ materials. The strength of this effect can be tuned via the length of the cavity and we estimate it to be sizable for cavities in the infrared range.

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Vadim Plastovets, Francesco Piazza. 2025-06-06. Cavity-control of the Ginzburg-Landau stiffness in superconductors. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06140

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