Superconductor pinning effect

Magnetic flux pinning effect of impurities in copper oxide superconductors... 

The symmetry changes of the vortex lattice in borocarbide superconductors affect their pinning properties as was shown for YNi2B2C (Silhanek et al. 2001). For the field orientation // c, the reorientation transition of the vortex lattice mentioned above was found to be associated with a significant kink in the volume pinning force Fp, whereas in the basal plane (for H c) the signature of nonlocal effects is a fourfold periodicity of Fp. 

In this paper, we concentrate on the /j+SR measurements and determine if YBa2Cu307 is a bulk. v-wave (nodeless) superconductor, as determined in Refs. 1-3, or a d-wave superconductor, whose order parameter A(k), changes sign as a function of k, as claimed in Ref. 8. In making this determination, we show that the features observed in the single-crystal data of Ref. 8 are actually due to temperature-activated fluxon de-pinning, an effect which is not readily observable in strongly pinned systems such as the early powder samples or the early heavily-twinned crystals. 

With the use of the DV-Xa molecular orbital method, electronic structure calculations have been performed to investigate the impurity effect on material properties. Firstly, calculations were done for F atoms substituted for 0 (oxygen) atoms in copper oxide superconductors. It was found that the population of the atomic orbitals of F atoms is small in HOMO (highest occupied molecular orbital) and a small fraction of charge carriers enters the impurity sites. The F impurities are therefore expected to be effective for pinning magnetic flux lines in Cu oxide superconductors. 

In addition, we performed electronic state calculations for impurity atoms in Cu oxide superconductors in order to examine the effects of these impurities on the pinning of magnetic flux lines. For impurity atoms such as F substituting for O atoms, the contribution of the atomic orbitals of these atoms to HOMO is small and most of the charge carriers generally do not exist at the impurity sites. Impurity atoms such as F thus effectively pin magnetic flux lines in Cu oxide superconductors. 

Fig. 43. Effects of heavy-ion irradiation under different angles on flux pinning in Y-I23 superconductors (a) hysteresis loops at (top) 5 K and (bottom) 70 K of an Y-123 single crystal irradiated with 580 MeV Sn ions under an angle of 30° with respect to the c-axis and measured with the field at +30° or -30° from the c-axis (cf. the schematic of the field and track orientations, from Civale 1997) (b) angular dependence of the transport critical current densities in Y-123 thin films irradiated under various angles with respect to the c-axis (top parallel to the c-axis, 340 MeV Xe middle 30°, 770 MeV Pb bottom 60°, 340 MeV Xe from Kraus et al. 1994b) (c) angular dependence of the transport critical current densities in an Y-123/Pr-123 multilayer system irradiated by 770 MeV Pb ions under an angle of 30° with respect to the c-axis (Kraus et al. 1994b).

In case of conventional metallic superconductors, the materials usually have any pinning force effective up to the held close to Hd and hence the magnetization curve is irreversible almost up to Hd- However, in case of oxide high-temperature superconductors, the hysteresis becomes almost zero far below Hd- The magnetic held that separates reversible and irreversible region... 

In NbsSn superconductors the flux lines are pinned by the grain boundaries in the Nb3Sn filaments. The dependence of the effective volume pinning force Fp on the grain size is shown in Fig. 4.2-14. This leads to the requirement that the reaction temperature is optimized not... 

Fig. tr.2-19 Schematic phenomenological phase diagram for the high-rc superconductors, including the effects of thermal fluctuations and pinning... 

In condensed matter physics, the effects of disorder, defects, and impurities are relevant for many materials properties hence their understanding is of utmost importance. The effects of randomness and disorder can be dramatic and have been investigated for a variety of systems covering a wide field of complex phenomena [109]. Examples include the pinning of an Abrikosov flux vortex lattice by impurities in superconductors [110], disorder in Ising magnets [111], superfluid transitions of He in a porous medium [112], and phase transitions in randomly confined smectic liquid crystals [113, 114]. 

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