Understanding magnetic instability in gapless superconductors

Magnetic instability in gapless superconductors still remains as a puzzle. In this article, we point out that the instability might be caused by using BCS theory in mean-field approximation, where the phase fluctuation has been neglected. The mean-field BCS theory describes very well the strongly coherent or rigid superconducting state. With the increase of mismatch between the Fermi surfaces of pairing fermions, the phase fluctuation plays more and more important role, and "soften" the superconductor. The strong phase fluctuation will eventually quantum disorder the superconducting state, and turn the system into a phase-decoherent pseudogap state.