Quasiparticle Lifetimes and the Conductivity Scattering Rate

Abstract

We compute the single-particle inverse lifetime, along with the conductivity-derived scattering rate, for a metallic system in an s-wave superconducting state. When both electron–phonon and electron-impurity scattering are included, we find that while these scattering rates are in qualitative agreement, in general quantitative agreement is lacking. We also derive results for the quasiparticle lifetime within the BCS framework with impurity scattering, which makes it clear that impurity scattering is suppressed for electrons near the Fermi surface in the superconducting state.