Electromagnetics of Superconductor/Paramagnet Heterostructures

Conditioning of magnetic fields is a novel route to improve type-II superconductor performance in high-current and high-field applications directed at increasing the current-carrying capability and the critical fields of superconductor/paramagnet heterostructures, as well as reducing their hysteretic AC loss.

Through a methodical analysis and noteworthy solutions, Electromagnetics of Superconductor/Paramagnet Heterostructures presents a phenomenological account of the remarkable electromagnetic properties of superconductor paramagnet heterostructures, as captured by Maxwell’s electrodynamics, generalized London theory, and Bean’s model of the critical state. Beginning with the introduction of the basic concepts of superconductivity which are necessary for understanding of the following studies, exact closed-form solutions are revealed for a range of idealized heterostructures.

Investigations of the superconductor constituents primarily focus on strips or tapes, filaments and tubes, with a transport current imposed or a magnetic field applied. Geometrical as well as materials aspects of both the magnetic shielding effect and the hysteretic AC loss undergo detailed analysis which permits identification of the conditions for non-dissipative critical, or even overcritical, states to exist. Crucial issues such as the barrier against the penetration of magnetic flux at superconductor/paramagnet interfaces or the nucleation of magnetic vortex loops equally find their place.

Finally, based on the magnetostatic-electrostatic analogues, the finite-element simulations of the Meissner state and the critical state of thin superconductors in paramagnetic environments of arbitrary shape and permeability are performed. This presents an effective tool for designing superconductor/paramagnet heterostructures.

Yuri Genenko, Apl. Professor of Theoretical Materials Science, Institute of Materials Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Hermann Rauh, Professor Emeritus of Materials Science, Institute of Materials Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt

Yuri Genenko obtained his PhD in 1987 and worked for the Donetsk Physical and Technical Institute until 1996. In 1993 he was awarded the national prize for young scientists for studies of layered superconductors and a DSc from the Institute for Metal Physics in Kiev for investigations of magnetic flux structures in low-dimensional superconductors (1995). He currently works at the Technical University of Darmstadt as a research professor.

Hermann Rauh graduated from the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1971. Following work on the electrical resistivity of dislocations in copper performed at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research afterwards, he obtained his PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 1975. Having obtained his habilitation in 1985, Rauh joined the Materials Department at the University of Oxford as a Visiting Fellow. With simultaneous affiliations to the Harwell Laboratory, he held a Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1994 Rauh became Professor of Theoretical Materials Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt.