M2 ICFP – Superconductivity

• Educators and schedule: Tuesday afternoon, Sorbonne University, Room 23 24 205 (7/09 to 23/10) and then 56 66 111 (9/11 to 11/12)
  • Nicolas Bergeal (ESPCI)
  • Claire Marrache (IJCLab, Orsay)
  • Dimitri Roditchev (ESPCI)
• Program
  • Discovery of superconductivity, main superconducting phenomena;
  • First phenomenological descriptions: magnetic field, temperature, energy;
  • London theory: Meissner effect, idea of macroscopic quantum state;
  • Ginzburg-Landau theory I: order parameter, energy, coherence length;
  • Ginzburg-Landau theory II: magnetic field, vortex, type I vs type II materials;
  • Weak superconductivity: Josephson phenomena;
  • BCS theory I: phonon-mediates electron attraction, Cooper pairs;
  • BCS theory II: Schrieffer’s trial wavefunction; gap, excitations, critical current;
  • Unconventional and low-dimensional superconductivity;
  • Labwork
• Lecture notes and exercise sheets
  • 08/09 – Lecture 1 – notes by Dimitri Roditchev
  • 15 and 22/09 – Lecture 2 – notes by Dimitri Roditchev
  • Article on the energy density in quantum mechanics – pdf.
  • Exercise session 1 (15/9) – pdf. Notes on the tutorial – pdf.
  • Exercise session 2 (22/9) – pdf.
  • 29/9 – Lecture 3 – notes by Dimitri Roditchev
  • Exercise session 3 (29/9) – pdf.
• Assignment
  • Bibliography assignment due October 13th, 2026
    • Instructions
    • Paper by J. Bardeen
    • Paper by J. Clem
    • Paper by W.A. Little and R.D. Parks
    • Paper by J. Simonin
• Bibliography
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• Evaluation
  • final exam : 3 heures, écrit (70%)
  • labwork: oral presentation (20%)
  • 2 homeworks (10%)

• Past exams: