Heat capacity of mesoscopic superconducting disks

¹ S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, J.D. Block, Sector 3 Salt Lake City, Calcutta 91, India
² Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä P.O.Box 35, 40351 Jyväskylä, Finland

Corresponding author: deo@phys.jyu.fi

Received: 23 September 1999
Accepted: 22 March 2000

Abstract

We study the heat capacity of isolated giant vortex states, which are good angular momentum (L) states, in a mesoscopic superconducting disk using the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory. At small magnetic fields the L =0 state qualitatively behaves like the bulk sample characterized by a discontinuity in heat capacity at . As the field is increased the discontinuity slowly turns into a continuous change which is a finite-size effect. The higher L states show a continuous change in heat capacity at at all fields. We also show that for these higher L states, the behavior of the peak position with change in field is related to the paramagnetic Meissner effect (irreversible) and can lead to an unambiguous observation of positive magnetization in mesoscopic superconductors.