This is a three-part text on the subject of superconductivity, an area of intense research activity worldwide. The first part covers the London, Pippard and Ginzburg-Landau theories, which are used to discuss a wide range of phenomena involving surface energies, vorticity, the intermediate and mixed states, boundaries and boundary conditions, the upper critical field in bulk, thin film and anisotropic superconductors, and surface superconductivity. The second section discusses the microscopic theory of Bardeen, Cooper and Schreiffer. The theory is used to discuss quasi particle tunneling and the Josephson effects from a microscopic point of view. The final part of the book treats non-uniform superconductors using the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approach with which it is possible to extract many important results without invoking Green's function methods. This text will be of great interest to graduate students and research workers in the fields of superconductivity, superfluidity, many body theory, and quantum liquids.

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We have measured the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the Hall mobility and transverse magnetoresistance in n-type InSb films epitaxially grown on GaAs substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The films show a giant magnetoresistance: e.g., at 240 K the resistivity increases over 20 times at a magnetic field of 5 T; the low field coefficient of resistivity at 77 K is as high as 47.5 μΩ cm/G. The Hall mobility decreases with magnetic field and saturates at higher fields. By taking the interface carrier transport into account, the observed field dependence of the Hall mobility and magnetoresistance may be understood based on a two-layer model.

A high resolution transmission electron microscopy study of multilayer films prepared by magnetron sputtering shows that the morphology of the growing interface in a-Si/Nb and a-SiN/NbN multilayers is remarkably uniform and smooth; this is in contrast to the polycrystalline AlN/NbN multilayers grown under similar conditions, which exhibit columnar grain structure with rough interfaces. For proper sputtering parameters, the amorphous layers seem to periodically restore a relatively smooth initial interface condition for the successive Nb (or NbN) layer growth, consequently interrupting the tendency toward increased roughness due to mechanisms such as columnar growth. Artificial multilayers having very flat interfaces could stimulate applications based on multilayer Josephson junctions.