Abstract
Current noise in the intermediate state of superconducting tantalum has been studied by using continuous recording of the potential across a wire carrying a current greater than the critical. The pattern of the noise fluctuations becomes clarified by the use of short specimens showing the noise to arise from spontaneous transitions between discrete resistance levels. The nature of these levels is described and their existence attributed to an intermediate state structure which is not small in scale compared with the specimen dimensions. The dependence of the resistance level scheme on the sample demonstrates the importance of the influence of the lattice structure.

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