On the penetration of the magnetic field into a superconductor

Abstract

It is known that in superconductors the exponential decay of the magnetic field is an approximation, which breaks down if the dimension of a Cooper pair ξ _f is of the order or smaller than the London penetration depth δ. The appearance of a nonlocal relation between current and field yields deviations from the exponential decay especially a sign reversal of the field at a certain distance. This sign reversal is connected with a change: of the surface energy in superconductors and of the structure of fluxoids together with their interaction. In this paper we present results on the decay of magnetic field which is calculated from the exact BCS-integral-kernel for weak fields. As a result, the nonlocal effects in the framework of BCS-theory can be described in good approximation by the ratio of the London penetration depth δ(T, l) and the dimension of Cooper pairs ξ _f (T, l). The evaluations show, that one has still sign reversal, i.e. large nonlocal effects, in Type II superconductors with a κ(T _c )≲,1.6. It should be mentioned that the limit κ≲1.6 coincides roughly with the experimentally observed region of attraction of fluxoids. In addition results on the penetration depths are summarized.