16 research outputs found
Is there a vortex-glass transition in high-temperature superconductors?
We show that DC voltage versus current measurements of a YBCO micro-bridge in
a magnetic field can be collapsed onto scaling functions proposed by Fisher,
Fisher, and Huse, as is widely reported in the literature. We find, however,
that good data collapse is achieved for a wide range of critical exponents and
temperatures. These results strongly suggest that agreement with scaling alone
does not prove the existence of a phase transition. We propose a criterion to
determine if the data collapse is valid, and thus if a phase transition occurs.
To our knowledge, none of the data reported in the literature meet our
criterion.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Collective pinning of a frozen vortex liquid in ultrathin superconducting YBa_2Cu_3O_7 films
The linear dynamic response of the two-dimensional (2D) vortex medium in
ultrathin YBa_2Cu_3O_7 films was studied by measuring their ac sheet impedance
Z over a broad range of frequencies \omega. With decreasing temperature the
dissipative component of Z exhibits, at a temperature T*(\omega) well above the
melting temperature of a 2D vortex crystal, a crossover from a thermally
activated regime involving single vortices to a regime where the response has
features consistent with a description in terms of a collectively pinned vortex
manifold. This suggests the idea of a vortex liquid which, below T*(\omega),
appears to be frozen at the time scales 1/\omega of the experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Finite-temperature resistive transition in the two-dimensional XY gauge glass model
We investigate numerically the resistive transition in the two-dimensional XY
gauge glass model. The resistively-shunted junction dynamics subject to the
fluctuating twist boundary condition is used and the linear resistances in the
absence of an external current at various system sizes are computed. Through
the use of the standard finite-size scaling method, the finite temperature
resistive transition is found at (in units of the Josephson
coupling strength) with dynamic critical exponent and the static
exponent , in contrast to widely believed expectation of the
zero-temperature transition. Comparisons with existing experiments and
simulations are also made.Comment: 5 pages in two columns, 4 eps figures included, to appear in PR
Vortex Motion Noise in Micrometre-Sized Thin Films of the Amorphous Nb0.7Ge0.3 Weak-Pinning Superconductor
We report high-resolution measurements of voltage (V) noise in the mixed
state of micrometre-sized thin films of amorphous Nb0.7Ge0.3, which is a good
representative of weak-pinning superconductors. There is a remarkable
difference between the noise below and above the irreversibility field Birr.
Below Birr, in the presence of measurable pinning, the noise at small applied
currents resembles shot noise, and in the regime of flux flow at larger
currents decreases with increasing voltage due to a progressive ordering of the
vortex motion. At magnetic fields B between Birr and the upper critical field
Bc2 flux flow is present already at vanishingly small currents. In this regime
the noise scales with (1-B/Bc2)^2 V^2 and has a frequency (f) spectrum of 1/f
type. We interpret this noise in terms of the properties of strongly driven
depinned vortex systems at high vortex density.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, version accepted for publication in PR