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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
In most situations, it is believed that inhomogeneity leads to a suppression or even complete destruction of superconducting order. One example of such an effect occurs when adding impurities to a sample. Similarly, it is usually assumed that spin and charge density wave orders compete with superconductivity, since they remove states from the Fermi surface. In this talk I will show that this behavior is not generic, and that there are cases of interest where inhomogeneity can lead to an increase in the superconducting onset temperature. I will discuss the relevance of our results to the high temperature superconductors.