Critical State Theory For The Magnetic Coupling Between Soft Ferromagnetic Materials And Type-II Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper extends the critical state theory to better understand the magnetic coupling in SC-SFM heterostructures, explaining phenomena like increased energy losses and flux deformation without overcritical currents, supported by analytical and numerical validation.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-analytical model for cylindrical SC-SFM heterostructures and validates it with a variational approach, addressing unexplained phenomena in superconducting-magnetic systems.

Findings

AC-losses depend strongly on SFM and SC radii for high permeability materials

The model explains flux deformation phenomena without overcritical currents

Numerical results align with magneto optical imaging observations

Abstract

Improving our understanding of the physical coupling between type-II superconductors (SC) and soft ferromagnetic materials (SFM), is root for progressing onto the application of SC-SFM metastructures in scenarios such as magnetic cloaking, magnetic shielding, and power transmission systems. However, in the latter some intriguing and yet unexplained phenomena occurred, such as a noticeable rise in the SC energy losses, and a local but not isotropic deformation of its magnetic flux density. These phenomena, which are in apparent contradiction with the most fundamental theory of electromagnetism for superconductivity, i.e., the critical state theory (CST), have remained unexplained for about 20 years, given place to the acceptance of the controversial and yet paradigmatic existence of the so-called overcritical current densities. Therefore, aimed to resolve these long-standing problems, we extended the CST by incorporating a semi-analytical model for cylindrical monocore SC-SFM heterostructures, setting the standards for its validation with a variational approach of multipole functionals for the magnetic coupling between Sc and SFM materials. It is accompanied by a comprehensive numerical study for SFM sheaths of arbitrary dimensions and magnetic relative permeabilities $\mu_{r}$, ranging from $\mu_{r}=5$ (NiZn ferrites) to $\mu_{r}=350000$ (pure Iron), showing how the AC-losses of the SC-SFM metastructure radically changes as a function of the SC and the SFM radius for $\mu_{r} \geq 100$. Our numerical technique and simulations revealed also a good qualitative agreement with the magneto optical imaging observations that were questioning the CST validness, proving therefore that the reported phenomena for self-field SC-SFM heterostructures can be understood without including the ansatz of overcritical currents.