Flux Motion in Type-I Superconductors

Abstract

A consistent picture of the current-carrying intermediate state of type-I slabs has been obtained from measurements of the coupled motion of flux, measurements of the Ettingshausen effect, and visual observations of diamagnetic powder replicas of the intermediate state. The electrical resistance has been shown to be due to flux flow when the average magnetic field in the sample is sufficiently small, and to Ohmic resistance of static normal domains when the field is close to $H_c$. In particular, flux-flow resistance occurs in the regime studied originally by Sharvin and recently by Chandrasekhar et al. and by Brandt and Parks.