Probing Inelastic Collisions by Pair Breaking in a Superconductor

A method is proposed which allows a direct determination of the inelastic collision rate of quasiparticles at the gap edge. This method can be explained as follows. Let a supercurrent remove the singularity in the density of states by pair breaking. Since the number of quasiparticles remains constant, they subsequently build up a nonequilibrium population which is extremely well localized near the gap edge. The decay of this excess population can then be observed in the fluctuations of the supercurrent.

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