New approach to characterizing the high-temperature superconducting transition

The shape of the normalized temperature derivative of the dc susceptibility provides useful information about superconducting materials. We propose that the position of the derivative peak be defined as the transition temperature $T_c$ and the width of this peak define its sharpness. The second derivative also helps the analysis. This method of parametrization is easily generalizable for other temperature-dependent properties such as the resistivity.