The influence of thermal fluctuations on uniform and nonuniform superconducting rings according to the Ginzburg-Landau and the Kramer-Watts-Tobin models.

We evaluate the influence of thermal fluctuations on superconducting rings that enclose a magnetic flux, using the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model (TDGL) or the Kramer-Watts-Tobin model (KWT), while thermal fluctuations are accounted for by means of Langevin terms. This method is applicable in situations where previous methods are not, such as for nonuniform loops, rings with large width to radius ratio and loops with large coherence length to perimeter ratio. We evaluate persistent currents, the position and statistical behavior of flux-induced vortices, and the lifetime of metastable fluxoid states. The influence of nonuniformity on the persistent current does not depend strongly on the details of the cross section profile; it depends mainly on its first harmonic, but not only on it. As a consequence of nonuniformity the maximum of the persistent current shifts to smaller fluxes and the passage between fluxoid states remains non-hysteretic down to lower temperatures than in the case of a uniform sample. Our results obtained using TDGL agree remarkably well with recent measurements of the persistent current in superconducting rings and with measurements of the position of a vortex that mediates between fluxoid states in an asymmetric disc with a hole; they could also provide a plausible explanation for the unexpectedly short measured lifetimes of metastable states. Comparison of TDGL and KWT indicates that they lead to the same results for the persistent current, whereas KWT leads to larger lifetimes than TDGL.