ESTIMATES OF LOWER CRITICAL MAGNETIC FIELD AND VORTEX PINNING BY INHOMOGENEITIES IN TYPE II SUPERCONDUCTORS.

The effect of an applied magnetic field on an inhomogeneous superconductor is studied and the value of the lower critical magnetic field Hc1 at which superconducting vortices appear is estimated. In addition, the authors locate the vortices of local minimizers, which depends on the inhomogeneous term a(x). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]