Spinning vortices in type 2 superconductors

A field-theoretical model displaying macroscopic type 2 superconductivity involves electromagnetic and antisymmetric tensor gauge fields interacting in a special background. Vortex lines are represented by Kalb-Ramond strings, and the force law for a vortex in a supercurrent follows naturally. It is shown by a duality transformation that this theory is equivalent to the low-energy sector of a spontaneously broken abelian Higgs model, but the existence of a charged background changes the nature of the symmetry breaking. As a result, it is not Neilsen-Olesen solutions but rather the spinning vortices which describe the macro-scopic properties of flux tubes in a superconductor. The relationship with Ginzburg-Landau theory is briefly discussed