Magnetic flux expulsion in a superconducting wire

Highlights: • A current-carrying superconducting wire reveals key physics of superconductivity. • The motion of magnetic field lines is tied to the motion of the charge carriers. • The theory of hole superconductivity explains it, the conventional theory does not. • The same physics explains the Meissner effect and the superconducting wire. • Alfven's theorem plays a key role in superconductivity. An electric current generates a magnetic field, and magnetic fields cannot exist in the interior of type I superconductors. As a consequence of these two facts, electric currents can only flow near the surface of a type I superconducting wire so that the self-field vanishes in the interior. Here we examine how an electric current flowing through the entire cross-section of a normal conducting wire becomes a surface current when it enters a superconducting portion of the wire. This geometry provides insight into the dynamics of magnetic flux expulsion that is not apparent in the Meissner effect involving expulsion of an externally applied magnetic field. It provides clear evidence that the motion of magnetic field lines in superconductors is intimately tied to the motion of charge carriers, as occurs in classical plasmas (Alfven's theorem) and as proposed in the theory of hole superconductivity [1], in contradiction with the conventional London-BCS theory of superconductivity.