Theory of fluctuations in superconductors

This book presents itself as both an encyclopedia and a textbook of fluctuation phenomena in superconductors. The first half presents the phenomenological methods of the Ginzburg-Landau theory and microscopical methods of the quantum field theory in the description of fluctuations. The second half provides a wide panorama of the superconductive fluctuations manifestated in different observables: their role in fields such as high temperature superconductivity, nano-superconductivity, the physics of Josephson junctions and granular superconductors, and strongly disordered superconductors. Other textbooks on this subject postulate that the BCS theory of superconductivity is an exact one. This book dispels this, indicating the limits of the applicability of the mean field theory and demonstrating the existence of a wide circle of interesting phenomena beyond its confines.