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Volume 16: Pages 236-253, 2003
Weight Anomalies Observed During Cool‐Down of High‐Temperature Superconductors
Harald Reiss
ABB Corporate Research, 4, Speyerer Str., D‐69115 Heidelberg, Germany
When cooling YBaCuO and BiSrCaCuO (2212) high‐temperature superconductor pellets from room temperature to 77 K in zero magnetic field, an increase of sample weight of the order of 0.1 to 1% was measured. Under thermal equilibrium, the detected weight increase in extreme cases was seven to nine times experimental uncertainties. When the same experiments were performed with BiSrCaCuO (2212) pellets in field cooling, the weight increase was weakened. These observations possibly indicate a presently unknown coupling between gravity and superconductivity. With the YBaCuO pellets, fine structures in weight versus time curves were observed; they probably correlate with the phase transition at critical temperature.
Keywords: high‐temperature superconductivity, YBaCuO and BiSrCaCuO (2212) pellets, Meissner state, Shubnikov phase, gravity, weight anomalies
Received: October 28, 2002; Published online: December 15, 2008