Transition to a Superconductor with Insulating Cavities
arXiv:cond-mat/0407599 · doi:10.1209/epl/i2004-10072-2
Abstract
An extreme type II superconductor with internal insulating regions, namely cavities, is studied here. We find that the cavity-bearing superconductor has lower energy than the defect-free superconductor above a critical magnetic induction for insulating cavities but not for metallic ones. Using a numerical approach for the Ginzburg-Landau theory we compute and compare free energy densities for several cavity radii and at least for two cavity densities, assuming a cubic lattice of spherical cavities.
7 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Europhysics Letters