PROPAGATION OF HEATED DOMAINS IN HTSC FILMS

A beam of laser radiation incident on the surface of a metallic film w hich is in thermal contact with an undercritical current-carrying HTSC film, produces a localized destruction of superconductivity in the in terface, which then propagates along all the CuO2-planes of the superc onductor. Using a quasi-stationary approximation of the heat equation, we have developped a theoretical model which shows that the correspon ding I-V characteristics are due to the flow of the current through a large number of time-varying resistors in parallel.