Temperature and Purity Dependence of the Superconducting Critical Field,<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>c</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mn/></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>. III. Electron Spin and Spin-Orbit Effects

Abstract

A previously obtained solution of the linearized Gor'kov equations for the upper critical magnetic field ${H}_{c2}$ of a bulk type-II superconductor is extended to include the effects of Pauli spin paramagnetism and spin-orbit impurity scattering. To carry out the calculation, it is necessary to introduce an approximation which assumes that spin-orbit scattering is infrequent in comparison with spin-independent scattering. It is found that spin-orbit scattering counteracts the effects of the spin paramagnetism in limiting the critical field and improves agreement between theory and experiment.