No Arabic abstract
The vortex phase diagrams of NdFeAsO0.85F0.15 and NdFeAsO0.85 superconductors are determined from the analysis of resistivity and current-voltage (I-V) measurements in magnetic fields up to 9 T. A clear vortex glass to liquid transition is identified only in the oxygen deficient NdFeAsO0.85, in which I-V curves can be well scaled onto liquid and glass branches consistent with the vortex glass theory. With increasing magnetic field, the activation energy U0, deduced from the Arrhenius plots of resistivity based on the thermally activated flux-flow model (TAFF), decays more quickly for NdFeAsO0.85F0.15 than for NdFeAsO0.85. Moreover, the irreversibility field Hirr of NdFeAsO0.85 increases more rapidly than that of NdFeAsO0.85F0.15 with decreasing temperature. These observations evidence the strong vortex pinning effects, presumably caused by the enhanced defects and disorders in the oxygen deficient NdFeAsO0.85. It is inferred that the enhanced defects and disorder can be also responsible for the vortex glass to liquid transition in the NdFeAsO0.85.
Pinning and creep determine the current--voltage characteristic of a type II superconductor and thereby its potential for technological applications. The recent development of strong pinning theory provides us with a tool to assess a superconductors electric properties in a quantitative way. Motivated by the observation of typical excess-current characteristics and field-scaling of critical currents, here, we analyze current--voltage characteristics measured on 2H-NbSe$_2$ and $a$-MoGe type II superconductors within the setting provided by strong pinning theory. The experimentally observed shift and rounding of the voltage-onset is consistent with the predictions of strong pinning in the presence of thermal fluctuations. We find the underlying parameters determining pinning and creep and discuss their consistency.
We report measurements of transfer functions and flux shifts of 20 on-chip high T$_C$ DC SQUIDs half of which were made purposely geometrically asymmetric. All of these SQUIDs were fabricated using standard high T$_C$ thin film technology and they were single layer ones, having 140 nm thickness of YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-x}$ film deposited by laser ablation onto MgO bicrystal substrates with 24$^0$ misorientation angle. For every SQUID the parameters of its intrinsic asymmetry, i. e., the density of critical current and resistivity of every junction, were measured directly and independently. We showed that the main reason for the on-chip spreading of SQUIDs voltage-current and voltage-flux characteristics was the intrinsic asymmetry. We found that for SQUIDs with a relative large inductance ($L>120 $ pH) both the voltage modulation and the transfer function were not very sensitive to the junctions asymmetry, whereas SQUIDs with smaller inductance ($Lsimeq 65-75 $ pH) were more sensitive. The results obtained in the paper are important for the implementation in the sensitive instruments based on high T$_C$ SQUID arrays and gratings.
We present a quantitative study of the current-voltage characteristics (CVC) of diffusive superconductor/ insulator/ ferromagnet/ superconductor (SIFS) tunnel Josephson junctions. In order to obtain the CVC we calculate the density of states (DOS) in the F/S bilayer for arbitrary length of the ferromagnetic layer, using quasiclassical theory. For a ferromagnetic layer thickness larger than the characteristic penetration depth of the superconducting condensate into the F layer, we find an analytical expression which agrees with the DOS obtained from a self-consistent numerical method. We discuss general properties of the DOS and its dependence on the parameters of the ferromagnetic layer. In particular we focus our analysis on the DOS oscillations at the Fermi energy. Using the numerically obtained DOS we calculate the corresponding CVC and discuss their properties. Finally, we use CVC to calculate the macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT) escape rate for the current biased SIFS junctions by taking into account the dissipative correction due to the quasiparticle tunneling. We show that the influence of the quasiparticle dissipation on the macroscopic quantum dynamics of SIFS junctions is small, which is an advantage of SIFS junctions for superconducting qubits applications.
We propose an inductive method to measure critical current density $J_c$ in bulk superconductors. In this method, an ac magnetic field is generated by a drive current $I_0$ flowing in a small coil mounted just above the flat surface of superconductors, and the third-harmonic voltage $V_3$ induced in the coil is detected. We present theoretical calculation based on the critical state model for the ac response of bulk superconductors, and we show that the third-harmonic voltage detected in the inductive measurements is expressed as $V_3= G_3omega I_0^2/J_c$, where $omega/2pi$ is the frequency of the drive current, and $G_3$ is a factor determined by the configuration of the coil. We measured the $I_0$-$V_3$ curves of a melt-textured $rm YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-delta}$ bulk sample, and evaluated the $J_c$ by using the theoretical results.
I-V characteristics of polycrystalline Y(1-x)CaxBa2Cu3O(7-{delta}) samples (x=0.025 and 0.20) have been measured at different temperatures and magnetic fields in the range 0.1 T-6.9 T. The scaling behavior has been established for both samples at all magnetic fields. The dynamic exponent z displays some morphology dependence with higher value for small grain size sample Y0.8Ca0.2Ba2Cu3O(7-{delta}). The static exponent { u} has been determined from {rho} vs. T dependence at given magnetic field. The critical exponents are field independent with one only exception ({ u} - for Y0.975Ca0.025Ba2Cu3O(7-{delta}) sample). This is connected with the special interrelation between the vortex correlation length, {xi}, and intervortex spacing {alpha} ({xi} leq {alpha}) at all magnetic fields above Tg for this sample and its better pinning.