Nonequilibrium superconductivity: New crystallographic and magnetic field effects

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Branch imbalance has been a valuable probe of nonequilibrium superconductivity for many years, and is presumed to be well understood. However, measurements on bulk niobium samples show existing pictures to be inadequate in two ways. In a single-crystal sample, an excitation with an anomalously long diffusion length is detected; and the magnitude and decay length of the branch imbalance signal in the mixed state tend to increase with increasing magnetic field strength, in contradistinction to all previous expectations and interpretations.