With the surprising discovery of superconductivity at temperatures above 100 K, this field was not only brought into the public eye, but also stimulated research in universities, scientific institutions and industry, thus continuing the fascinating development which began with the discovery of the Josephson effect in the sixties. Cryoelectronics has become a special branch of cryophysics and cryotechnics and today plays a prominent role whenever high resolution and precision measurements are required. Motivated by this development, seven years ago scientists working in cryoelectronics in the Federal Republic of Germany felt the necessity for regular meetings allowing a free exchange of ideas and results achieved. Seminars under the title of "Kryoelektronische Bauelemente" were held for the first time at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig in 1982 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Walther MeiBner, a pioneer in superconductivity. Since then, meetings have been held every year at different venues in Germany. It is now felt that the status of this field necessitates a review of the results of the past, a description of the current state of the art, and a discussion of future perspectives. This book, entitled SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM ELECTRONICS is a collection of invited lectures and contributions which will inform the reader on the most interesting problems involving fundamentals, sensitive detectors and precision metrology being studied by different groups.

Presents a modern treatment of the physics of vortex matter, mainly applied to unconventional superconductors and superfluids but with extensions to other areas of physics.

This second edition has been brought up to date by the inclusion of an extensive new chapter on aspects relevant to high-temperature superconductors. The new edition provides researchers, engineers and other scientists with an introduction to the field and makes useful supplementary reading for graduate students in low-temperature physics.

Topological defects are generic in continuous media. In the relativistic quantum vacuum they are known as cosmic strings, in superconductors as quantized flux lines, and in superfluids, low-density atomic Bose-Einstein condensates and neutron stars as quantized vortex lines. This collection of articles by leading scientists presents a modern treatment of the physics of vortex matter, mainly applied to unconventional superconductors and superfluids but with extensions to other areas of physics.

The first edition of this book provided an introduction to the many static and dynamic features of magnetic flux structures in what are now called classical or low-temperature superconductors. It went out of print not long after the discovery of high-temperature superconductors in 1986 by J.G. Bednorz and K.A. Miiller, a discovery which resulted worldwide in an explosive growth of research and development in the field of superconductivity. Because of this upsurge of activities, a strong demand for this book clearly continued. Since the contents of the fourteen chapters of the first edition are still valid and continue to represent a useful introduction into the various subjects, it was felt that a reprinting of these chapters in this second edition would be highly attractive. In this way, the reader is also able to trace the earlier scienti fic developments, themselves constituting important ideas sometimes forgot ten by the new community dealing with high-temperature superconductivity. However, because of the exciting and important recent progress in the field of high-temperature superconductivity, an extensive chapter has been added in this second edition. It provides a summary of the new developments and a discussion of the highlights. Here keywords such as vortex matter, vortex imaging, and half-integer magnetic flux quanta describe surprising new issues."