548 research outputs found
Anharmonicity of flux lattices and thermal fluctuations in layered superconductors
We study elasticity of a perpendicular flux lattice in a layered
superconductor with Josephson coupling between layers. We find that the energy
contains ln(flux displacement) terms, so that elastic constants cannot be
strictly defined. Instead we define effective elastic constants by a thermal
average. The tilt modulus has terms with ln(T) which for weak fields, i.e.
Josephson length smaller than the flux line spacing, lead to displacement
square average proportional to T/ln(T). The expansion parameter indicates that
the dominant low temperature phase transition is either layer decoupling at
high fields or melting at low fields.Comment: 15 pages, 2 eps figures, Revtex, submitted to Phys. Rev. B.
Sunj-class: superconductivit
Decoupling Transition I. Flux Lattices in Pure Layered Superconductors
We study the decoupling transition of flux lattices in a layered
superconductors at which the Josephson coupling J is renormalized to zero. We
identify the order parameter and related correlations; the latter are shown to
decay as a power law in the decoupled phase. Within 2nd order renormalization
group we find that the transition is always continuous, in contrast with
results of the self consistent harmonic approximation. The critical temperature
for weak J is ~1/B, where B is the magnetic field, while for strong J it
is~1/sqrt{B} and is strongly enhanced. We show that renormaliztion group can be
used to evaluate the Josephson plasma frequency and find that for weak J it
is~1/BT^2 in the decoupled phase.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. New sections III, V. Companion to following
article on "Decoupling and Depinning II: Flux lattices in disordered layered
superconductors
Disorder Induced Transitions in Layered Coulomb Gases and Superconductors
A 3D layered system of charges with logarithmic interaction parallel to the
layers and random dipoles is studied via a novel variational method and an
energy rationale which reproduce the known phase diagram for a single layer.
Increasing interlayer coupling leads to successive transitions in which charge
rods correlated in N>1 neighboring layers are nucleated by weaker disorder. For
layered superconductors in the limit of only magnetic interlayer coupling, the
method predicts and locates a disorder-induced defect-unbinding transition in
the flux lattice. While N=1 charges dominate there, N>1 disorder induced defect
rods are predicted for multi-layer superconductors.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, RevTe
Critical Behavior of the Flux-line Tension in Extreme Type-II Superconductors
The entropic corrections to the flux-line energy of extreme type-II
superconductors are computed using a schematic dual Villain model description
of the flux quanta. We find that the temperature profile of the lower-critical
field vanishes polynomially at the transition with an exponent
in the isotropic case, while it exhibits an inflection point for the case of
weakly coupled layers in parallel magnetic field. It is argued that vestiges of
these effects have already been observed in high-temperature superconductors.Comment: 12 pages of plain TeX, 2 postscipt figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Thermal metal in network models of a disordered two-dimensional superconductor
We study the universality class for localization which arises from models of
non-interacting quasiparticles in disordered superconductors that have neither
time-reversal nor spin-rotation symmetries. Two-dimensional systems in this
category, which is known as class D, can display phases with three different
types of quasiparticle dynamics: metallic, localized, or with a quantized
(thermal) Hall conductance. Correspondingly, they can show a variety of
delocalization transitions. We illustrate this behavior by investigating
numerically the phase diagrams of network models with the appropriate symmetry,
and for the first time show the appearance of the metallic phase.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Abrupt Change of Josephson Plasma Frequency at the Phase Boundary of the Bragg Glass in Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta}
We report the first detailed and quantitative study of the Josephson coupling
energy in the vortex liquid, Bragg glass and vortex glass phases of
Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta} by the Josephson plasma resonance. The measurements
revealed distinct features in the T- and H-dependencies of the plasma frequency
for each of these three vortex phases. When going across either
the Bragg-to-vortex glass or the Bragg-to-liquid transition line,
shows a dramatic change. We provide a quantitative discussion on the properties
of these phase transitions, including the first order nature of the
Bragg-to-vortex glass transition.Comment: 5pages, 4figure
Temperature-doping phase diagram of layered superconductors
The superconducting properties of a layered system are analyzed for the cases
of zero- and non-zero angular momentum of the pairs. The effective
thermodynamic potential for the quasi-2D XY-model for the gradients of the
phase of the order parameter is derived from the microscopic superconducting
Hamiltonian. The dependence of the superconducting critical temperature T_c on
doping, or carrier density, is studied at different values of coupling and
inter-layer hopping. It is shown that the critical temperature T_c of the
layered system can be lower than the critical temperature of the
two-dimensional Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition T_BKT at some values
of the model parameters, contrary to the case when the parameters of the
XY-model do not depend on the microscopic Hamiltonian parameters.Comment: To be published in Phys. Rev.
Insulating and Conducting Phases of RbC60
Optical measurements were performed on thin films of RbC,
identified by X-ray diffraction as mostly material. The samples were
subjected to various heat treatments, including quenching and slow cooling from
400K. The dramatic increase in the transmission of the quenched samples, and
the relaxation towards the transmission observed in slow cooled samples
provides direct evidence for the existence of a metastable insulating phase.
Slow cooling results in a phase transition between two electrically conducting
phases.Comment: Minor revisions. Submitted to PRB, RevTeX 3.0 file, 2 postscript
figures included, ir_dop
Mott-Peierls Transition in the extended Peierls-Hubbard model
The one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model is studied at several band
fillings using the density matrix renormalization group method. Results show
that the ground state evolves from a Mott-Peierls insulator with a correlation
gap at half-filling to a soliton lattice with a small band gap away from
half-filling. It is also confirmed that the ground state of the Peierls-Hubbard
model undergoes a transition to a metallic state at finite doping. These
results show that electronic correlations effects should be taken into account
in theoretical studies of doped polyacetylene. They also show that a
Mott-Peierls theory could explain the insulator-metal transition observed in
this material.Comment: 4 pages with 3 embedded eps figure
Correlation Effect on Peierls Transition
The effect of correlation on Peierls transition, which is accompanied by a
dimerization, t_d, of a bond alternation for transfer energy, has been examined
for a half-filled one-dimensional electron system with on-site repulsive
interaction (U). By applying the renormalization group method to the
interaction of the bosonized Hamiltonian, the dimerization has been calculated
variationally and self-consistently with a fixed electron-phonon coupling
constant (\lambda) and it is shown that t_d takes a maximum as a function of U.
The result is examined in terms of charge gap and spin gap and is compared with
that of the numerical simulation by Hirsch [Phys. Rev. Lett 51 (1983) 296].
Relevance to the spin Peierls transition in organic conductors is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 71 No.3
(2002
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