Superconductivity

If mercury is cooled below 4.1 K, it loses all electric resistance. This

discovery of superconductivity by H. Kammerlingh Onnes in 1911 was
followed by the observation of other metals which exhibit zero resistivity
below a certain critical temperature. The fact that the resistance is zero has
been demonstrated by sustaining currents in superconducting lead rings for
many years with no measurable reduction. An induced current in an ordinary
metal ring would decay rapidly from the dissipation of ordinary resistance,
but superconducting rings had exhibited a decay constant of over a billion
years!

One of the properties of a superconductor is that it will exclude magnetic fields, a phenomenon
called the Meissner effect.
The disappearance of electrical resistivity was modeled in terms of electron pairing in the crystal
lattice by John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer in what is commonly called the
BCS theory.
A new era in the study of superconductivity began in 1986 with the discovery of high critical
temperature semiconductors.

The Meissner Effect

When a material makes the transition from the normal to superconducting state, it actively
excludes magnetic fields from its interior; this is called the Meissner effect.
This constraint to zero magnetic field inside a superconductor is distinct from the perfect
diamagnetism which would arise from its zero electrical resistance. Zero resistance would imply
that if you tried to magnetize a superconductor, current loops would be generated to exactly
cancel the imposed field (Lenz’s law). But if the material already had a steady magnetic field
through it when it was cooled trough the superconducting transition, the magnetic field would be
expected to remain. If there were no change in the applied magnetic field, there would be no
generated voltage (Faraday’s law) to drive currents, even in a perfect conductor. Hence the active
exclusion of magnetic field must be considered to be an effect distinct from just zero resistance.
A mixed state of meissner effect occurs with Type 2 materials.
One of the theoretical explanations of the Meissner effect comes from the London equation. It
shows that the magnetic field decays exponentially inside the superconductor over a distance of
20-40 nm. It is described in terms of a parameter called the London penetration depth.

BCS Theory of Superconductivity

The properties of Type1 superconductors were modeled successfully by the efforts
of John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer in what is commonly called the
BCS theory. A key conceptual element in this theory is the pairing of electrons close
to the Fermi level into Cooper pairs through interaction with the crystal lattice. This
pairing results from a slight attraction between the electrons related to lattice
vibrations; the coupling to the lattice is called a phonon interaction.

Pairs of electrons can behave very differently from single electrons which are fermions and must
obey the Pauli exclusion principle. The pairs of electrons act more like bosons which can
condense into the same energy level. The electron pairs have a slightly lower energy and leave
an energy gap above them on the order of .001 eV which inhibits the kind of collision
interactions which lead to ordinary resistivity. For temperatures such that the thermal energy is
less than the band gap, the material exhibits zero resistivity.
Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer received the Nobel Prize in 1972 for the development of the
theory of superconductivity.