Metastability and paramagnetism in superconducting mesoscopic disks

A projected order parameter is used to calculate, not only local minima of the Ginzburg-Landau energy functional, but also saddle points or energy barriers responsible for the metastabilities observed in superconducting mesoscopic disks (Geim et al. Nature {\bf 396}, 144 (1998)). We calculate the local minima magnetization and find the energetic instability points between vortex configurations with different vorticity. We also find that, for any vorticity, the supercurrent can reverse its flow direction on decreasing the magnetic field before one vortex can escape.