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Is there any evidence it is slower than a quench?

The rapid, energy-rich return of a superconducting electromagnet to the normal state is called a quench, and occurs very rapidly, perhaps almost instantaneously.
As the superconductor is cooled down, it makes the reverse transition from a normally conducting state to a superconducting state. How fast is this transition? Is there any evidence that it is any slower than the quench of the same magnet?

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I think you are comparing things that are not the same: the normal transistion to supercondution while cooling (which happens with the current quiescent) should be compared to the normal transition to normal conduction while warming up in the abscense of current. And it should be obvious that it will be very hard to drive a transition to superconduction while any non-trivial current is flowing simply because there will be rather a lot of heat generation that has to be managed before you can even begin to cool the material. – dmckee Dec 26 '12 at 22:31

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