Enhancement of the critical temperature in iron pnictide superconductors by finite-size effects

Abstract

Recent experiments have shown that, in agreement with previous theoretical predictions, superconductivity in metallic nanostructures can be enhanced with respect to the bulk limit. Motivated by these results we study finite size effects (FSE) in an iron-pnictide superconductor. For realistic values of the bulk critical temperature Tc ~ 20-50K, we find that, in the nanoscale region L ~ 10 nm, Tc(L) has a complicated oscillating pattern as a function of the system size L. A substantial enhancement of Tc with respect to the bulk limit is observed for different boundary conditions, geometries and two microscopic models of superconductivity. Thermal fluctuations, which break long range order, are still small in this region. Finally we show that the differential conductance, an experimental observable, is also very sensitive to FSE.