Thermal Conductivity of Pure Type-II Superconductors in High Magnetic Fields

Abstract

The electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity in a pure type-II superconductor in the gapless region (i.e., in a field close to the upper critical field ${H}_{c2}$) is obtained. Use is made of the fact that the order parameter is described by the Abrikosov solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equation and $\frac{l}{{\ensuremath{\xi}}_{0}}\ensuremath{\gg}1$, where $l$ is the electronic mean free path and ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{0}$ is the coherence distance. It is shown that the thermal conductivity drops rapidly in the superconducting region like ${({H}_{c2}\ensuremath{-}H)}^{\frac{1}{2}}$, and is strongly anisotropic.