Superconducting State

"The first edition of our book Mechanisms of conventional and high Tc superconductivity was published in 1993"--p. [vii].

This textbook series has been designed for final year undergraduate and first year graduate students, providing an overview of the entire field showing how specialized topics are part of the wider whole, and including references to current areas of literature and research.

With the advent of High Temperature Superconductivity and the increasing reliability of fabrication techniques, superconductor technology has moved firmly into the mainstream of academic and industrial research. There is currently no single source of practical information giving guidance on which technique to use for any particular category of superconductor. An increasing number of materials scientists and electrical engineers require easy access to practical information, sensible advice and guidance on 'best-practice' and reliable, proven fabrication and characterisation techniques.The Handbook will be the definitive collection of material describing techniques for the fabrication and analysis of superconducting materials. In addition to the descriptions of techniques, authoritative discussions written by leading researchers will give guidance on the most appropriate technique for a particular situation.Characterisation and measurement techniques will form an important part of the Handbook, providing researchers with a standard reference for experimental techniques. The tutorial style description of these techniques makes the Handbook particularly suitable for use by graduate students.The Handbook will be supported by a comprehensive web site which will be updated with new data as it emerges.The Handbook has six main sections: -- Fundamentals of Superconductivity - characteristic properties, elementary theory, critical current of type II superconductors-- Processing - bulk materials, wires and tapes, thick and think films, contact techniques-- Characterisation Techniques - structure/microstructure, measurement and interpretation of electromagnetic properties,measurement of physics properties-- Materials - characteristic properties of low and high Tc materials-- Applications - high current applications, trapped flux devices, high frequency devices, josephson junction devic

Superconductivity covers the nature of the phenomenon of superconductivity. The book discusses the fundamental principles of superconductivity; the essential features of the superconducting state-the phenomena of zero resistance and perfect diamagnetism; and the properties of the various classes of superconductors, including the organics, the buckministerfullerenes, and the precursors to the cuprates. The text also describes superconductivity from the viewpoint of thermodynamics and provides expressions for the free energy; the Ginzburg-Landau and BCS theories; and the structures of the high temperature superconductors. The band theory; type II superconductivity and magnetic properties; and the intermediate and mixed states are also considered. The book further tackles critical state models; various types of tunneling and the Josephson effect; and other transport properties. The text concludes by looking into spectroscopic properties. Physicists and astronomers will find the book invaluable.

This book presents an overview of the science of superconducting materials. It covers the fundamentals and theories of superconductivity. Subjects of special interest involving mechanisms of high temperature superconductors, tunneling, transport properties, magnetic properties, critical states, vortex dynamics, etc. are present in the book. It assists as a fundamental resource on the developed methodologies and techniques involved in the synthesis, processing, and characterization of superconducting materials. The book covers numerous classes of superconducting materials including fullerenes, borides, pnictides or iron-based chalcogen superconductors ides, alloys and cuprate oxides. Their crystal structures and properties are described. Thereafter, the book focuses on the progress of the applications of superconducting materials into superconducting magnets, fusion reactors, and accelerators and other superconducting magnets. The applications also cover recent progress in superconducting wires, power generators, powerful energy storage devices, sensitive magnetometers, RF and microwave filters, fast fault current limiters, fast digital circuits, transport vehicles, and medical applications.

This book provides the reader with a detailed theoretical treatment of the key mechanisms of superconductivity, up to the current state of the art (phonons, magnons, plasmons). In addition, the book describes the properties of key superconducting compounds that are of most interest for science and its applications today. For many years there has been a search for new materials with higher values of the main parameters, such as the critical temperature and the critical current. At present, the possibility to observe superconductivity at room temperature has become perfectly realistic. The book is especially concerned with high Tc systems, such as the high Tc oxides, hydrides with record values of the critical temperature under high pressure, nanoclusters, etc. A number of interesting novel superconducting systems have been discovered recently. Among them: topological materials, interface systems, intercalated graphene. The book contains rigorous derivations, based on statistical mechanics and many-body theory. The book is also providing qualitative explanations of the main concepts and results, which makes it accessible and interesting for a broader readership.

The book includes a thorough description of a wide range of physical properties of organic superconductors of reduced dimensionality. The authors start with an overview of the field followed by a background discussion and selected experimental topics. A critical discussion of theoretical proposals is presented under the constraints of experimental observations and exciting possibilities for the symmetry of the order parameter are presented, including the cases of inhomogeneous superconducting states and triplet superconductivity. The possible origins of Cooper pairing are explored and tests to detect experimentally the pairing symmetry are described in detail. The book ends with a discussion of important open questions, where the search for their answers will keep the field alive for the next decade.