5 research outputs found
Josephson vortices and solitons inside pancake vortex lattice in layered superconductors
In very anisotropic layered superconductors a tilted magnetic field generates
crossing vortex lattices of pancake and Josephson vortices (JVs). We study the
properties of an isolated JV in the lattice of pancake vortices. JV induces
deformations in the pancake vortex crystal, which, in turn, substantially
modify the JV structure. The phase field of the JV is composed of two types of
phase deformations: the regular phase and vortex phase. The phase deformations
with smaller stiffness dominate. The contribution from the vortex phase
smoothly takes over with increasing magnetic field. We find that the structure
of the cores experiences a smooth yet qualitative evolution with decrease of
the anisotropy. At large anisotropies pancakes have only small deformations
with respect to position of the ideal crystal while at smaller anisotropies the
pancake stacks in the central row smoothly transfer between the neighboring
lattice positions forming a solitonlike structure. We also find that even at
high anisotropies pancake vortices strongly pin JVs and strongly increase their
viscous friction.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Inter- and Intragranular Effects in Superconducting Compacted Platinum Powders
Compacted platinum powders exhibit a sharp onset of diamagnetic screening at
mK in zero magnetic field in all samples investigated. This
sharp onset is interpreted in terms of the intragranular transition into the
superconducting state. At lower temperatures, the magnetic ac susceptibility
strongly depends on the ac field amplitude and reflects the small intergranular
critical current density . This critical current density shows a strong
dependence on the packing fraction f of the granular samples. Surprisingly,
increases significantly with decreasing f ( A/cm for f = 0.67 and A/cm for f
= 0.50). The temperature dependence of shows strong positive curvature
over a wide temperature range for both samples. The phase diagrams of inter-
and intragranular superconductivity for different samples indicate that the
granular structure might play the key role for an understanding of the origin
of superconductivity in the platinum compacts.Comment: 11 pages including 9 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. B in Nov. 0