Abstract
It is shown that a multifilament superconductor, made up of a bundle of twisted filaments embedded in a normal matrix, can be treated as a new state of matter with anisotropic electrical and magnetic properties. Macroscopic electromagnetic field vectors, which satisfy Maxwell's equations, are defined in terms of averages over the "microscopic" fields. However, the sources for the field, i.e., the current and charge densities and the magnetization and polarization, differ in some respects from those for ordinary matter. In particular, since the elementary magnetic dipole moments are distributed along lines rather than located at fixed points, the definition of the magnetization transverse to the filaments differs by a factor of 2 from that for ordinary matter, and the definition of the macroscopic current density is also slightly modified. Constitutive relationships among the field vectors in terms of permeabilities, dielectric constants, and conductivities are examined in the limits of strong and weak fields.

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