Superconductivity: Physics and Applications
DOI: 10.1063/1.2117828
Kristian Fossheim and Asle Sudbø’s Superconductivity: Physics and Applications is a modern review of the subject. The book covers key aspects of superconductivity, outlined in a clear and logically structured form. It also provides much up-to-date information and covers advanced topics. This work is one of the first general monographs about superconductivity written after the discovery of high-temperature superconductors (HTSs), an event that has led to considerable new kinds of investigations.
The book discusses many novel classes of superconductors: oxide, organic, heavy-fermion, and magnesium diboride. Except for MgB2, the classes, for the most part, were found before HTSs but were typically regarded as exotic materials, and their features were not described in other monographs. Maybe the only new, interesting class is magnetic superconductors, which are not mentioned in the book. The coexistence of superconductivity and magnetism currently attracts much interest among researchers. Inclusion of the subject would have been useful in completing the story of a modern view of superconductivity.
The theory of superconductivity, even in its simplest description, still needs to be updated, especially in light of new superconducting materials. The authors discuss superconducting order-parameter symmetry, anisotropy, and the quasi-two-dimensionality of electron and vortex systems as necessary elements of a modern theory of superconductivity. Investigations of HTSs have led to many exciting developments in vortex structures, pinning, and dynamics—and such meaty topics richly deserve their place in the book. The authors have written readable and accurate sections on such new topics as thermally activated creep and collective creep, geometric barriers, and solid-liquid transition in vortex structures. However, they could have expanded discussions on fluctuations in low-dimensional superconductors: Only the Kpsterlitz–Thouless transition and vortex–antivortex unbinding and disordering by other topological defects are discussed in detail. On the other hand, a full-length review of the superconducting–normal (SN) transition problem is very useful, even if the discussion is of interest to only a small group of readers.
Fossheim and Sudbø devote insufficient attention to Josephson structures. They only briefly mention novel effects like plasma oscillations in multilayered superconducting systems, and leave out such important subjects as macroscopic quantum phenomena in submicron-scale Josephson structures. A discussion of those new directions in superconductivity could have been placed in sections on “Advanced Topics” or “Topical Contributions.”
Fossheim and Sudbø’s choice of subjects and contributing authors for the topical contributions is random, and presented papers are fragmentary. For example, Yoshiteru Maeno’s paper covers spin-triplet superconductivity but does not mention recent publications by Kostya Efetov and colleagues, which are related to possible spin-triplet superconductivity in multilayered superconductor–ferromagnet structures. Jochen Mannhart’s paper describes π-junctions based on d-wave symmetry in HTS systems but fails to mention π-junction realizations in superconductor–ferromagnet—superconductor Josephson junctions and mesoscopic SN structures.
In “Selected Applications,” the authors also create a general impression that the book is incomplete. For instance, they do not mention that Josephson-junction applications also include rapid single-flux quantum Josephson logic, microwave flux-flow generators and receivers, amplifiers based on superconducting quantum interference devices, and so forth. In their discussion of high-frequency applications of superconductors, the authors also should have mentioned superconducting bolometers and switches.
Although the second half of Superconductivity is somewhat disconnected, the monograph as a whole offers a fresh look at the modern state of superconductivity. Certainly, it is not a book for readers who are new to superconductivity, but for scientists familiar with and interested in superconductivity, the new monograph has many interesting moments.
More about the Authors
Valery Ryazanov. Institute of Solid State Physics, Chernogolovka, Russia .
