This book is written for students and practitioners for use it as a textbook. In its 20 Chapters, the book explains simulation of the first instants of temperature evolution when a superconductor sample is subject to a disturbance.

Such a study is not found in current superconductor literature. But it is this period of time, some milliseconds, that has to be investigated in detail, to detect and avoid superconductor quench as early as possible. It is therefore not transport phenomena over extended periods, the conventional range of investigations, that is simulated in this book.

The book instead analyses short-time, temporal and spatial resolution of a competition between quench and superconductor relaxation. This includes a critique of standard superconductor theory, with focus on integration of the Pauli exclusion principle during relaxation, and a virtual disputation between two scientists on how to calculate relaxation time. By a systematic discussion of convergence and reproducibility of simulated results, the reliability of predictions of superconductor states is discussed when a sample approaches the thermal phase transition. For this purpose, the book considers correlations between stability functions, density of electron pairs, critical current density and entropy production.

The book focuses on simulations under non-uniform conditions. Non-uniform temperature, as the most important among the three classical, critical superconductor parameters, and accordingly, of non-uniform, spatial and temporal distribution of critical and transport or shielding currents after disturbances, altogether set realistic conditions under which simulations over extended periods of time may become meaningful.

The simulations are applied to multi-filamentary and multi-layered superconductors, all under local disturbances, as examples to find solution of Fourier’s Differential Equation by the Finite Element method also in complicated superconductor architecture. The simulations are extended to miniature and micro-miniature superconductor samples. Flux flow resistance of superconductors is considered in all simulations.

By application of the Laser-Flash method, the book suggests obtaining thermophysical data (diffusivity) from transient temperature distributions, when they are needed for the simulations, instead of using temperature at just single front or rear side sample positions, the conventional approach.

Harald Reiss is Associated Professor at the Department of Physics of Wuerzburg University, Wuerzburg, Germany. He earned his Diploma from the University of Heidelberg and completed his Doctoral Thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, where he focused on compound reactions with heavy ions and statistical model analysis of nuclear compound reactions, respectively. His Thesis for Habilitation at the Department of Physics, University of Wuerzburg, explored radiative transfer in non-transparent, dispersed media.

He has made a variety of contributions to numerical simulations of superconductor transient processes, as embodiment of general superconductor theory (like embodiment does in patent literature). His experiences extend to quite other fields like performance of thermal superinsulations,  high-temperature batteries, thermodynamics of, and practical devices for interconnection technology and, in co-operations, of an alternative concept for a small nuclear fusion reactor. Notably, his contributions to superconductor research and development have been funded in public research programs. He has actively participated in numerous expert meetings at Brussels since 1996, particularly in EU and EU-Japan high-temperature superconductor research projects.