We provide evidence that a single mechanism-flux flow along channels-can explain the functional form of the critical current density (J c) in the low temperature superconductor Nb 3 Sn and in the high temperature superconductors (HTS) YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ (YBCO) and (Bi,Pb) 2 Sr 2 Ca n-1 Cu n O x (BiSCCO) in low and high magnetic fields. In this paper, we show that standard flux pinning theories, used for the last four decades to describe J c in low temperature superconductors (LTS), cannot explain the strain dependence of J c in YBCO because J c is a function of strain but the average superconducting properties are not. We conclude that in the polycrystalline samples presented here, the channels are grain boundaries that are narrow and metallic in Nb 3 Sn and YBCO but wide and semiconducting in BiSCCO. Strain alters J c by changing the superconducting properties of the grains in Nb 3 Sn but by changing the grain boundaries in YBCO.

Although we can use misorientation angle to distinguish the grain boundaries that can carry high critical current density in high temperature superconductors (HTS) from those that cannot, there is no established normal state property equivalent. In this paper, we explore the superconducting and normal state properties of the grains and grain boundaries of polycrystalline YBa2Cu3O7−x (YBCO) using complementary magnetisation and transport measurements, and calculate how resistive grain boundaries must be to limit in polycrystalline superconductors. The average resistivity of the grain boundaries, in our micro- and nanocrystalline YBCO are 0.12 Ωm and 8.2 Ωm, values which are much higher than that of the grains and leads to huge values of 2 × 103 and 1.6 × 105 respectively. We find that the grain boundaries in our polycrystalline YBCO are sufficiently resistive that we can expect the transport to be several tens of orders of magnitude below the potential current density of the grains in our YBCO samples, as is found experimentally. Calculations presented show that increasing values by ∼2 orders of magnitude in high fields is still possible in all state-of-the-art technological high-field superconductors. We conclude: grain boundary engineering is unlikely to improve sufficiently in randomly aligned polycrystalline YBCO, to make it technologically useful for high-field applications; in low temperature superconducting intermetallics, such as Nb3Sn, large increases in may be achieved by completely removing the grain boundaries from these materials and, as is the case for thin films of Nb, Ba(FeCo)2As2 and HTS materials, by incorporating additional artificial pinning.

J. (2016) 'Modelling and comparison of in-eld critical current density anisotropy in high temperature superconducting (HTS) coated conductors.', IEEE transactions on applied superconductivity., 26 (3). 6600906 .

We present a detailed spectroscopic investigation of a thermal 87 Rb atomic vapour in magnetic fields up to 0.4 T in the Voigt geometry. We fit experimental spectra with our theoretical model ElecSus and find excellent quantitative agreement, with RMS errors of ∼ 0.3%. We extract the magnetic field strength and the angle between the polarisation of the light and the magnetic field from the atomic signal and find excellent agreement to within ∼ 1% with a commercial Hall probe. Finally, we present an investigation of the relative sensitivity of this technique to variations in the field strength and angle with a view to enabling atom-based high-field vector magnetometry.

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