Abstract
The Specific heat of a well-annealed alloy V-5 at.% Ta, measured at °K in steady magnetic fields, displays sharp, bulk, superconducting transitions at upper critical fields a factor larger than the calorimetrically derived thermodynamic critical fields . The transitions are similar to those observed earlier by Morin in Ga, but in the present case it is unlikely that the bulk nature of the high-field transitions can be attributed to a nearly complete occupation of the specimen volume by dislocation-centered high-field superconducting filaments of diameter comparable to the penetration depth, since electron transmission microscopy studies on an identically prepared specimen indicate that in at least 95% of the specimen volume the mean separation between dislocations is greater than 1.4× cm. However, the present data are explicable on the basis of the Ginzburg-Landau-Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory with a parameter . The transition specific heat jumps occur at °K in fields kG, respectively, where normal state electronic specific heat coefficient = 9.20 mJ/mole . The values are in fair agreement with those calculated via Ehrenfest's equation for second-order phase transitions using Abrikosov's theoretical value of at for , where magnetization. For , with ; for kG, respectively, where is the electronic contribution to the specific heat. The exponential temperature dependence of down to 1.4°K suggests an essentially everywhere finite, field-dependent, high-field energy gap in accord with Abrikosov's vortex model.
- Received 5 August 1963
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.133.A719
©1964 American Physical Society