4 research outputs found
Disorder-induced melting of the charge order in thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3
We have studied the magnetic-field-induced melting of the charge order in
thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 (PCMO) films on SrTiO3 (STO) by X-ray diffraction,
magnetization and transport measurement. At small thickness (25 nm) the films
are under tensile strain and the low-temperature melting fields are of the
order of 20 T or more, comparable to the bulk value. With increasing film
thickness the strain relaxes, which leads to a strong decrease of the melting
fields. For a film of 150 nm, with in-plane and out-of-plane lattice parameters
closer to the bulk value, the melting field has reduced to 4 T at 50 K, with a
strong increase in the hysteretic behavior and also an increasing fraction of
ferromagnetic material. Strain relaxation by growth on a template of
YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) or by post-annealing yields similar results with an even
stronger reduction of the melting field. Apparently, strained films behave
bulk-like. Relaxation leads to increasing suppression of the CO state,
presumably due to atomic scale disorder produced by the relaxation process.Comment: 7 pages, 4 fig
Correlation between the Josephson coupling energy and the condensation energy in bilayer cuprate superconductors
We review some previous studies concerning the intra-bilayer Josephson
plasmons and present new ellipsometric data of the c-axis infrared response of
almost optimally doped Bi_{2}Sr_{2}CaCu_{2}O_{8}. The c-axis conductivity of
this compound exhibits the same kind of anomalies as that of underdoped
YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7-delta}. We analyze these anomalies in detail and show that
they can be explained within a model involving the intra-bilayer Josephson
effect and variations of the electric field inside the unit cell. The Josephson
coupling energies of different bilayer compounds obtained from the optical data
are compared with the condensation energies and it is shown that there is a
reasonable agreement between the values of the two quantities. We argue that
the Josephson coupling energy, as determined by the frequency of the
intra-bilayer Josephson plasmon, represents a reasonable estimate of the change
of the effective c-axis kinetic energy upon entering the superconducting state.
It is further explained that this is not the case for the estimate based on the
use of the simplest ``tight-binding'' sum rule. We discuss possible
interpretations of the remarkable agreement between the Josephson coupling
energies and the condensation energies. The most plausible interpretation is
that the interlayer tunneling of the Cooper pairs provides the dominant
contribution to the condensation energy of the bilayer compounds; in other
words that the condensation energy of these compounds can be accounted for by
the interlayer tunneling theory. We suggest an extension of this theory, which
may also explain the high values of T_{c} in the single layer compounds
Tl_{2}Ba_{2}CuO_{6} and HgBa_{2}CuO_{4}, and we make several experimentally
verifiable predictions.Comment: 16 pages (including Tables) and 7 figures; accepted for publication
in Physical Review
Ferromagnetic ground state in
Resistivity and magnetisation measurements were done with bulk
and thin-film samples of . Bulk samples showed an antiferromagnetic
insulating ground state as expected for this composition, whereas thin films
demonstrated a ferromagnetic metallic ground state. This effect is attributed
to the film adhesion to the substrate which prevents the lattice distortions
necessary for the charge and antiferromagnetic ordering that occur in the
bulk samples