Dynamic processes in superconductors and the laws of thermodynamics

Abstract

The transition from the superconducting to the normal state in a magnetic field was considered as a irreversible thermodynamic process before 1933 because of Joule heating. But all physicists became to consider this transition as reversible after 1933 because of the obvious contradiction of the Meissner effect with the second law of thermodynamics if this transition is considered as a irreversible process. In order to avoid the contradiction with the second law of thermodynamics, physicists postulated in the thirties of the last century that the surface screening current is damped without the generation of Joule heat. The superconducting transition is considered as the phase transition since that time and the conventional theory of superconductivity was created in the framework of the equilibrium thermodynamics. The inconsistency of the conventional theory of superconductivity, created in the framework of the equilibrium thermodynamics, with Joule heating, on which Jorge Hirsch draws reader’s attention, is a consequence of this history.