We present a simple liquid assisted processing (LAP) method, to be used in-situ during pulsed laser deposition growth to give both rapid growth rates (50 Hz deposition leading to >250 nm/min with a single plume) and strong pinning (improved x 5-10 over plain standard YBCO films grown at similar rates). Achieving these two important features simultaneously has been a serious bottleneck to date. LAP enhances the kinetics of the film growth so that good crystalline perfection can be achieved at up to 60 x faster growth rates than normal, while also enabling artificial pinning centres to be self assembled into fine nanocolumns. In addition, LAP allows for RE mixing (80% of Y with 20% of Yb, Sm, or Yb+Sm), creating effective point-like disorder within the REBCO lattice and which leads to strongly improved pinning at 30 K and below. Overall, LAP is a simple method which could be adopted by other in-situ physical or vapour deposition methods (i.e PLD, MOCVD, evaporation, etc) to significantly enhance both growth rate and performance.
Low density flux dynamics in Nd based cuprate (NdBa2Cu3O7-x) HTSC single crystals trapped in 1 Oe range DC magnetic fields were investigated for the first time. Complex measurements of time, temperature and field dependence of magnetization were performed. Using the results obtained and the Anderson-Kim model the normalized magnetization relaxation rate S and the averaged effective pinning potential U were calculated. We show a significant (one or even two orders) increase in the effective pinning potential in these samples in comparison with measurements performed in high magnetic fields for …
We study the spin-density wave (stripe) instability in lattices with mixed low-temperature orthorhombic (LTO) and low-temperature tetragonal (LTT) crystal symmetry. Within an explicit mean-field model it is shown how local LTT regions act as pinning centers for static stripe formation. We calculate the modulations in the local density of states near these local stripe regions and find that mainly the coherence peaks and the van Hove singularity (VHS) are spatially modulated. Lastly, we use the real-space approach to simulate recent tunneling data in the overdoped regime where the VHS has been …
Over the past few years, several exciting experiments in the cuprates have seen evidence of a transient superconducting state upon optical excitation polarized along the c-axis [R. Mankowsky et al., Nature 516, 71 (2014)]. The competition between d-form-factor order and superconductivity in these materials has been proposed as an important factor in the observed enhancement of superconductivity. Central to this effect is the structure of the bond-density-wave along the c-axis, in particular, the $c$-axis component of the ordering vector $Q_z$. Motivated by the fact that the bond-density-wave o…
For strongly correlated electrons the relation between total number of charge carriers $n_e$ and the chemical potential $μ$ reveals for large Coulomb energy the apparently paradoxical pinning of $μ$ within the Mott gap, as observed in high-$T_c$ cuprates. By unravelling consequences of the non-trivial topology of the charge gauge U(1) group and the associated ground state degeneracy we found a close kinship between the pinning of $μ$ and the zero-temperature divergence of the charge compressibility $κ\sim\partial n_e/\partialμ$, which marks a novel quantum criticality governed by topological c…
We present a theory of the pinning of dynamic spin density wave (SDW) fluctuations in a d-wave superconductor by local imperfections which preserve spin-rotation invariance, such as impurities or vortex cores. The pinning leads to static spatial modulations in spin-singlet observables, while the SDW correlations remain dynamic: these are the `Friedel oscillations' of a spin-gap antiferromagnet. We connect the spectrum of these modulations as observed by scanning tunnelling microscopy to the dynamic spin structure factor measured by inelastic neutron scattering.
We propose a model that explains the reduction of $T_c$ due to the pinning of stripes by planar impurity co-doping in cuprates. A geometrical argument about the planar fraction of carriers affected by stripe pinning leads to a a linear $T_c$ suppression as a function of impurity concentration $z$. The critical value $z_c$ for the vanishing of superconductivity is shown to scale like $T_c^2$ in the under-doped regime and becomes universal in the optimally- and over-doped regimes. Our theory agrees very well with the experimental data in single- and bi-layer cuprates co-doped with Zn, Li, Co, et…
We examine the effects of disorder on striped phases in high-temperature superconductors and related materials. In the presence of quenched disorder, pinning by the atomic lattice - which might give rise to commensuration effects - is irrelevant for the stripe array on large length scales. As a consequence, the stripes have divergent displacement fluctuations and topological defects are present at all temperatures. Therefore the positional order of the stripe array is short ranged, with a finite correlation length even at zero temperature. Thus lock-in phenomena can exist only as crossovers bu…
We propose a mechanism for superconductivity suppression in stripe-correlated cuprates based on the pinning of the stripes by impurities, such as Zn. The suppression of superfluid density occurs in the vicinity of the impurity due to the low dimensional character of superfluid carriers on the stripes. Simple geometric argument about the planar fraction of the carriers, affected by stripe pinning, leads to prediction for impurity critical concentration $z_c \sim T^2_c$ and for the linear $T_c$ suppression by Zn doping. We show that our results reproduce the Uemura relation in the pure system an…
Egorov and March plotted the product of resistivity and the copper spin-lattice relaxation time vs. temperature for yttrium barium copper oxide finding a minimum at temperature T greater than the superconducting temperature, heralding an electronic phase change which can be interpreted as the formation of a "preformed" pair. In this context we propose a superconducting mechanism based on the notion that the preformed pair is a "soft" boson (a localized, different type of Cooper pair) which dissociates above the classical BKT transition temperature, resulting in two circular charge density wave…
A comprehensive theory of superconductivity in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ must explain experiments that suggest even parity superconducting order and others that suggest broken time reversal symmetry. Completeness further requires that the theory applies to Ca$_2$RuO$_4$, a Mott-Hubbard semiconductor that exhibits an unprecedented insulator-to-metal transition driven by very small electric field, and also by doping with very small concentration of electrons, leading to a metallic state proximate to ferromagnetism. A valence transition model, previously proposed for superconducting cuprates [Phys. Rev. B {\…
The design of artificial vortex pinning landscapes is a major goal towards large scale applications of cuprate superconductors. While disordered nanometric inclusions have shown to modify their vortex phase diagram and to produce enhancements of the critical current1,2, the effect of ordered oxide nanostructures remains essentially unexplored. This is due to the very small nanostructure size imposed by the short coherence length, and to the technological difficulties in the nanofabrication process. Yet, the novel phenomena occurring at oxide interfaces open a wide spectrum of technological opp…
The intergranular pinning potential U and the critical current density Jc for polycrystalline RuSr2Gd1.5Ce0.5Cu2O10 ruthenate-cuprate were determined at zero magnetic field and temperature through the frequency shift in the peak of the imaginary part of the ac magnetic susceptibility, X". A critical state model, including a flux creep term, was found to accurately describe the X" behavior. The obtained values, U(H=0,T=0) ~ 30 meV and Jc(H=0,T=0) ~ 110 A/cm^2 are about two orders of magnitude and four times lower, respectively, in comparison with the high-Tc cuprate YBa2Cu3O7. These results wer…
In order to investigate the inhomogeneity of the superconducting (SC) state in the overdoped high-$T_{\rm c}$ cuprates, we have measured the magnetic susceptibility, $χ$, of La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ (LSCO) single crystals in the overdoped regime in magnetic fields parallel to the c-axis up to 7 T on warming after zero-field cooling. It has been found for $x$ = 0.198 and 0.219 that the temperature dependence of $χ$ in 1 T shows a plateau, that is, $χ$ is almost independent of temperature in a moderate temperature-range in the SC state. Moreover, a so-called second peak in the magnetization curve…
Extensive work has shown that irradiation with 0.8 GeV protons can produce randomly oriented columnar defects (CD's) in a large number of HTS materials, specifically those cuprates containing Hg, Tl, Pb, Bi, and similar heavy elements. Absorbing the incident proton causes the nucleus of these species to fission, and the recoiling fission fragments create amorphous tracks, i.e., CD's. The superconductive transition temperature Tc decreases linearly with proton fluence and we analyze how the rate depends on the family of superconductors. In a study of Tl-2212 materials, adding defects decreases …
Maximizing the sustainable supercurrent density, Jc, is crucial to high current applications of superconductivity and, to achieve this, preventing dissipative motion of quantized vortices is key. Irradiation of superconductors with high-energy heavy ions can be used to create nanoscale defects that act as deep pinning potentials for vortices. This approach holds unique promise for high current applications of iron-based superconductors because Jc amplification persists to much higher radiation doses than in cuprate superconductors without significantly altering the superconducting critical tem…
The dynamics of charge-ordered states is one of the key issues in underdoped cuprate high-temperature superconductors, but static short-range charge-order (CO) domains have been detected in almost all cuprates. We probe the dynamics across the CO (and structural) transition in La$_{1.48}$Nd$_{0.4}$Sr$_{0.12}$CuO$_{4}$ by measuring nonequilibrium charge transport, or resistance $R$ as the system responds to a change in temperature and to an applied magnetic field. We find evidence for metastable states, collective behavior, and criticality. The collective dynamics in the critical regime indicat…
Hole concentration in the CuO2 plane largely controls all the properties in the normal and superconducting states of high-Tc cuprates. The critical current density, Jc, is no exception. Previous hole content dependent studies have demonstrated that the role of intrinsic depairing current density in determining the observed critical current density in copper oxide superconductors. It is also widely agreed upon that the temperature and magnetic field dependent vortex pinning energy plays a major role the Jc of a system.This pinning energy depends directly on the superconducting condensation ener…
We argue that in strongly correlated electron system collective instanton excitations of the phase field (dual to the charge) arise with a great degree of stability, governed by gauge flux changes by an integer multiple of $2π$. By unraveling consequences of the non-trivial topology of the charge gauge U(1) group, we found that the pinning of $μ$ and the zero-temperature divergence of charge compressibility $κ\sim\partial n_e/\partialμ$ defines novel "hidden" quantum criticality on verge of the Mott transition governed by the protectorate of stable topological numbers rather than Landau paradi…
Square arrays of sub-micrometer columnar defects in thin YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{7-δ}$ (YBCO) films with spacings down to 300 nm have been fabricated by a He ion beam projection technique. Pronounced peaks in the critical current and corresponding minima in the resistance demonstrate the commensurate arrangement of flux quanta with the artificial pinning landscape, despite the strong intrinsic pinning in epitaxial YBCO films. Whereas these vortex matching signatures are exactly at predicted values in field-cooled experiments, they are displaced in zero-field cooled, magnetic-field ramped experime…
We report on the superior vortex pinning of single and multilayer Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 thin films with self-assembled c-axis and artificially introduced ab-plane pins. Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 can accept a very high density of pins (15-20 vol%) without Tc suppression. The matching field is greater than 12 T, producing a significant enhancement of the critical current density Jc, an almost isotropic Jc (Theta,20T) > 10^5 A/cm2, and global pinning force density Fp of about 50 GN/m^3. This scenario strongly differs from the high temperature cuprates where the addition of pins without Tc suppression is limite…
We investigated the nature of the quasi-particle state in the vortex core by means of the flux-flow Hall effect measurements at 15.8 GHz. We measured the flux-flow Hall effect in cuprate superconductors, Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{y}$ and YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{y}$ single crystals, whose equilibrium $B$-$T$ phase diagrams were different. As a result, we found that the Hall angle is independent of the magnetic field, and reaches an order of unity at low temperatures in BSCCO. However, in YBCO, the angle increases with increasing magnetic field even at low temperatures. We understood that this …
Here, we present an electrical transport study in single crystals of LaFe$_{0.92}$Co$_{0.08}$AsO ($T_c \simeq 9.1$ K) under high magnetic fields. In contrast to most of the previously reported Fe based superconductors, and despite its relatively low $T_c$, LaFe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$AsO shows a superconducting anisotropy which is comparable to those seen for instance in the cuprates or $γ_H = H_{c2}^{ab}/H_{c2}^{c} = m_c/m_{ab} \simeq 9$, where $m_c/m_{ab}$ is the effective mass anisotropy. Although, in the present case and as in all Fe based superconductors, $γ\rightarrow 1$ as $T \rightarrow 0$. Unde…
Theoretically, the vortex melting phenomenon occurs at both low and high magnetic fields at a fixed temperature. While the high field melting has been extensively investigated in high Tc cuprates, the low field melting phenomena in the presence of disorder hasn't been well explored. Using bulk magnetization measurement and high-sensitivity differential magneto-optical imaging technique, we detect a low-field vortex melting phenomenon in a single crystal of Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. The low field melting is accompanied by a significant change in local magnetization ~ 3 G, which decreases with increasing…
The mixed-state Hall effect was examined in a Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 epitaxial film with a high critical current density. The transverse resistivity ρxy and the longitudinal resistivity ρxx follow power law scaling ρxy = Aρxxβ. In the temperature-sweep with a fixed field (T sweep), all of the β values are independent of magnetic field up to 9 T, and are lower than 2.0 (around 1.8). In contrast, the β values in the magnetic-field sweep with a fixed temperature (H sweep) change from 1.8 to 2.0 as the temperature increases from 13 to 16 K even in the T/H region that overlaps with the T sweep measuremen…
Nanoscale Spatial Tuning of Superconductivity in Cuprate Thin Films via Direct Laser Writing
Politecnico di Milano（米兰理工大学）；Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, ICMAB-CSIC（巴塞罗那材料科学研究所）；Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona（巴塞罗那自治大学）；Université de Liège（列日大学）
We performed high-field magnetotransport and magnetization measurements on a single crystal of the 122-phase iron pnictide Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2. Unlike the HTS cuprates and 1111-phase oxypnictides, Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 showed practically no broadening of the resistive transitions under magnetic fields up to 45 T. The mass anisotropy gamma = Hc2ab/Hc2c deduced from the slopes of the upper critical field dHc2ab/dT = 4.9T/K and dHc2c/dT = 2.5T/K decreases from ~2 near Tc, to ~1.5 at lower temperatures. We observed the irreversibility field close to Hc2, and a rather unusual symmetric volume pinning force…
The discovery of Fe-based superconductors (FBS) as the second class of high-temperature superconducting transition (high-Tc) materials after the cuprates generated a significant impact on the community of fundamental and applied superconductivity research. Whenever a new class of high-Tc superconducting materials is discovered, a lot of effort is devoted to growing single crystals and epitaxial thin films for exploring basic physical quantities. Although several properties of FBS are similar to the cuprates (large upper critical fields, resulting from a short coherence lengths, and small carri…
We report that single crystals of (Ba,K)Fe2As2 with Tc = 32 K have a pinning potential, U0, as high as 10^4 K, with U0 showing very little field depend-ence. In addition, the (Ba,K)Fe2As2 single crystals become isotropic at low temperatures and high magnetic fields, resulting in a very rigid vortex lattice, even in fields very close to Hc2. The rigid vortices in the two dimensional (Ba,K)Fe2As2 distinguish this compound from 2D high Tc cuprate superconductors with 2D vortices, and make it being capable of cearrying very high critical current.Flux jumping due to high Jc was also observed in lar…
