Superconducting properties of a mesoscopic parallelepiped with anisotropic surface conditions

• The boundary conditions lead to significantly differences on the vortex configurations.
• The vortices are strongly influenced by the de Gennes boundary conditions.
• Sample of the same size, different boundary conditions can produce distinct giant vortex states.
• De Gennes boundary conditions produce a reduction of the thermodynamics properties.

We consider a mesoscopic superconducting parallelepiped with different boundary conditions on different parts of the surface, xy, xz and yz surface planes. This is realized by considering different values of the de Gennes extrapolation length b on different surfaces of the sample. Our investigation was carried out by solving the three-dimensional (3D) time dependent Ginzburg–Landau (TDGL) equations. We studied the local magnetic field, order parameter, and both the magnetization and vorticity curves as functions of the external applied magnetic field for different values of b on the surfaces of the sample. We show that this surface anisotropy has very strong influence on the vortex configurations and the magnetization as a function of the external applied magnetic field, both experimentally accessible.