Thermomagnetic history effects in niobium and its implication for H c1 in highT c superconductors

The existence of a remanent magnetization (M _rem) on switching off the field of a field cooled (FC) sample of a highT _c superconductor is often reported. It has recently been argued thatM _rem should equal the difference in FC and zero field cooled (ZFC) magnetizations (M _FC —M _ZFC) in hard superconductors and this has been demonstrated to hold in single crystals of YBCO at 4.2K over a limited range ofH values. We report the detailed magnetization measurements under various thermomagnetic histories (of whichM _rem is one special case) on two specimens of Nb, which show different extents of flux trapping. We find that there are in general three regions inH, T space, corresponding toM _rem+M _ZFC−M _FC=0,M _rem<(M _FC−M _ZFC) andM _rem>(M _FC−M _ZFC). At anyT, the equality holds forH<H _c1(T), and forH→H _c2 (M _FC−M _ZFC) asymptotically vanishes and thereM _rem>(M _FC−M _ZFC). We show that there exists an intermediate region in all hard superconductors, whereM _rem<(M _FC−M _ZFC). The range over which this situation persists, however, depends on the degree of irreversibility in a sample. We can explain qualitatively all the history dependent magnetization data in terms of the critical state model. We point out an inconsistency in an earlier analysis to determineH _c1(T) from such data in YBCO. We also propose a new criterion for putting limits onH _c1(T) in hard superconductors.