Survival of parity effects in superconducting grains at finite temperature

We study the thermodynamics of a small, isolated superconducting grain using a recently developed quantum Monte Carlo method. This method allows us to simulate grains at any finite temperature and with any level spacing in an exact way. We focus on the pairing energy, pairing gap, condensation energy, heat capacity, and spin susceptibility to describe the grain. We discuss the interplay between finite size (mesoscopic system), pairing correlations, and temperature in full detail