Department of Physics, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.
Laboratory of Cryogenic Nanoelectronics, Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University, Nizhny Novgorod 603950, Russia.
Sci Adv. 2016 Feb 26;2(2):e1501250. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501250. eCollection 2016 Feb.
For almost a century, thermoelectricity in superconductors has been one of the most intriguing topics in physics. During its early stages in the 1920s, the mere existence of thermoelectric effects in superconductors was questioned. In 1944, it was demonstrated that the effects may occur in inhomogeneous superconductors. Theoretical breakthrough followed in the 1970s, when the generation of a measurable thermoelectric magnetic flux in superconducting loops was predicted; however, a major crisis developed when experiments showed puzzling discrepancies with the theory. Moreover, different experiments were inconsistent with each other. This led to a stalemate in bringing theory and experiment into agreement. With this work, we resolve this stalemate, thus solving this long-standing "paradox," and open prospects for exploration of novel thermoelectric phenomena predicted recently.
近一个世纪以来，超导体中的热电子学一直是物理学中最引人入胜的课题之一。在 20 世纪 20 年代的早期阶段，超导体中热电子学效应的存在就受到了质疑。1944 年，人们证明这种效应可能发生在非均匀超导体中。20 世纪 70 年代，当预测到超导回路中会产生可测量的热电磁通量时，理论上取得了突破；然而，当实验显示出与理论的令人费解的差异时，一场重大的危机爆发了。此外，不同的实验彼此不一致。这导致了理论和实验之间达成一致的僵局。通过这项工作，我们解决了这个僵局，从而解决了这个长期存在的“悖论”，并为探索最近预测的新型热电子现象开辟了前景。
