Developments of concepts in superconductivity

JAN 01, 1963

Nobel Laureate John Bardeen, professor of physics at the University of Illinois, presented the following address in London, England, on September 17, 1962, when he received the third Fritz London Award in recognition of his work in developing a successful theory of superconductivity. The presentation was made during the Eighth International Conference on Low Temperature Physics, which was held at Queen Mary College, University of London. The Proceedings of that conference, to be published by Butterworths, London, are expected to be available in April.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3050710

John Bardeen

In this talk, I would like to trace the origins of some of the major theoretical and experimental advances which have led to the development of a successful microscopic theory of superconductivity and then to indicate briefly some of the current problems. Fritz London made extremely important contributions to the theory and laid the groundwork for our present understanding. He showed how the Meissner effect and other superconducting properties could be understood as a consequence of quantum effects operating on a macroscopic scale. A striking prediction of his, which only recently has been verified experimentally, is the quantization of flux in a superconducting ring. My own work on superconductivity theory has been influenced greatly by that of Fritz London.

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References

1. The basic paper of the microscopic theory is J. Bardeen, L. N. Cooper, and J. R. Schrieffer, Phys. Rev. 108, 1175 (1957).
For a recent review of the subject and for references to the literature see the article of J. Bardeen and J. R. Schrieffer in Progress in Low Temperature Physics, Vol. III, C. J. Gorter, ed. (North‐Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1961), p. 170–288.
2. F. London, Proc. Roy. Soc. (London) 152A, 24 (1935).
3. F. London, Superfluids, Vol. I, Chap. E. (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1950).
4. To simplify the argument, we omit effects of the magnetic field on current paths, which is not valid except for flow in very thin films.

More about the authors

John Bardeen, University of London, England.