A possible cooling effect in high temperature superconductors

Abstract

We show that an adiabatic increase of the supercurrent along a superconductor with lines of nodes of the order parameter on the Fermi surface can result in a cooling effect. The maximum cooling occurs if the supercurrent increases up to its critical value. The effect can also be observed in a mixed state of a bulk sample. An estimate of the energy dissipation shows that substantial cooling can be performed during a reasonable time even in the microkelvin regime.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.