Analysis of "Revaluation of the lower critical field in superconducting H_3S and LaH_10 (Nature Comm. 13, 3194, 2022)" by V. S. Minkov et al

Abstract

In Nat Comm. 13,3194 (2022) [1] and an "Author Correction" to it [2], Minkov et al. presented magnetization data versus applied magnetic field for H_3S and LaH_10 under pressure, argued that the data provide evidence that these materials are superconducting at high temperatures, and extracted from the reported data the behavior of lower critical fields versus temperature. In several papers [3,4,5,6] analyzing Refs. [1,2] it was shown that the published magnetization data could not have been obtained from the reported measured data through the processes described in Refs. [1,2]. Recently, Minkov et al performed a revaluation of their experimental results [7] and argued that the results derived from their new analysis are consistent with the results reported earlier [1]. In addition, they made public the underlying data [8] from which the data published in Ref. [1] were derived. In this paper we analyze those underlying data and conclude that (a) the data published in Ref. [1] are incompatible with the underlying measured data, and (b) the revaluation analysis presented in Ref. [7] does not support the conclusions drawn by the authors in Ref. [7] nor Ref. [1].