Do columnar defects produce bulk pinning?

Abstract

From magneto-optical imaging performed on heavy-ion irradiated YBaCuO single crystals, it is found that at fields and temperatures where strong single vortex pinning by individual irradiation-induced amorphous columnar defects is to be expected, vortex motion is limited by the nucleation of vortex kinks at the specimen surface rather than by half-loop nucleation in the bulk. In the material bulk, vortex motion occurs through (easy) kink sliding. Depinning in the bulk determines the screening current only at fields comparable to or larger than the matching field, at which the majority of moving vortices is not trapped by an ion track.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter