First critical field in the pinned three dimensional Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity

Abstract

We study extreme type-II superconductors described by the three dimensional magnetic Ginzburg-Landau functional incorporating a pinning term $a_\varepsilon(x)$, which we assume to be a bounded measurable function satisfying $b\leq a_\varepsilon(x)\leq 1$ for some constant $b>0$. A hallmark of such materials is the formation of vortex filaments, which emerge when the applied magnetic field exceeds the first critical field $H_{c_1}$. In this work, we provide a lower bound for this critical field and provide a characterization of the Meissner solution, that is, the unique vortexless configuration that globally minimizes the energy below $H_{c_1}$. Moreover, we show that the onset of vorticity is intrinsically linked to a weighted variant of the isoflux problem studied in [C. Rom\'an, On the First Critical Field in the Three Dimensional Ginzburg-Landau Model of Superconductivity, Comm. Math. Phys. 367 (2019), no.1, 317--349. arXiv:1802.09390] and [C. Rom\'an, \'E. Sandier and S. Serfaty, Bounded vorticity for the 3D Ginzburg-Landau model and an isoflux problem, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 126 (2023), no.3, 1015--1062. arXiv:2110.06858]. A crucial role is played by the $\varepsilon$-level tools developed in [C. Rom\'an, Three dimensional vortex approximation construction and $\varepsilon$-level estimates for the Ginzburg-Landau functional, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 231 (2019), no.3, 1531--1614. arXiv:1712.07604], which we adapt to the weighted Ginzburg-Landau framework.