No Arabic abstract
The critical current of a thin superconducting strip of width $W$ much larger than the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length $xi$ but much smaller than the Pearl length $Lambda = 2 lambda^2/d$ is maximized when the strip is straight with defect-free edges. When a perpendicular magnetic field is applied to a long straight strip, the critical current initially decreases linearly with $H$ but then decreases more slowly with $H$ when vortices or antivortices are forced into the strip. However, in a superconducting strip containing sharp 90-degree or 180-degree turns, the zero-field critical current at H=0 is reduced because vortices or antivortices are preferentially nucleated at the inner corners of the turns, where current crowding occurs. Using both analytic London-model calculations and time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau simulations, we predict that in such asymmetric strips the resulting critical current can be {it increased} by applying a perpendicular magnetic field that induces a current-density contribution opposing the applied current density at the inner corners. This effect should apply to all turns that bend in the same direction.
In this paper we calculate the critical currents in thin superconducting strips with sharp right-angle turns, 180-degree turnarounds, and more complicated geometries, where all the line widths are much smaller than the Pearl length $Lambda = 2 lambda^2/d$. We define the critical current as the current that reduces the Gibbs free-energy barrier to zero. We show that current crowding, which occurs whenever the current rounds a sharp turn, tends to reduce the critical current, but we also show that when the radius of curvature is less than the coherence length this effect is partially compensated by a radius-of-curvature effect. We propose several patterns with rounded corners to avoid critical-current reduction due to current crowding. These results are relevant to superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, where they suggest a means of improving the bias conditions and reducing dark counts. These results also have relevance to normal-metal nanocircuits, as these patterns can reduce the electrical resistance, electromigration, and hot spots caused by nonuniform heating.
A transport current distribution over a wide superconducting sheet is shown to strongly change in a presence of bulk magnetic screens of a soft magnet with a high permeability. Depending on the geometry, the effect may drastically suppress or protect the Meissner state of the sheet through the enhancement or suppression of the edge barrier critical current. The total transport current in the magnetically screened Meissner state is expected to compete with the critical current of the flux-filled sheet only for samples whose critical current is initially essentially controlled by the edge barrier effect.
Superconducting critical currents $j_{c} > 10^{5}$ A/cm$^{2}$ at temperatures $T sim 50$ K and magnetic fields $B sim 6$ T are reported for the YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3-x}$Mo$_{x}$O$_{7+d}$ compound with $x = 0.02$. Clear evidence for the increased pinning force $F_p$ was found from a peak effect present for $j_{c}(B)$. The pinning force was analyzed by a scaling procedure using Kramers approach. For a wide range of fields and temperatures, we were able to express all $F_p$ data as a single function of a reduced field $b = B/B_k$, where the scaling field $B_{k} << H_{c2}$ was related to the irreversibility filed $B_{irr}$. Analyses of the field dependence of $j_{c}(B,T)$ and $F_{p}(b)$ show that the effective pinning centers act as weakly interacting extended point-like defects. We propose that the pinning centers are randomly distributed small defects, most likely the dimers of MoO$_6$ octahedra in the CuO chains.
The ability of type-II superconductors to carry large amounts of current at high magnetic fields is a key requirement for future design innovations in high-field magnets for accelerators and compact fusion reactors and largely depends on the vortex pinning landscape comprised of material defects. The complex interaction of vortices with defects that can be grown chemically, e.g., self-assembled nanoparticles and nanorods, or introduced by post-synthesis particle irradiation precludes a priori prediction of the critical current and can result in highly non-trivial effects on the critical current. Here, we borrow concepts from biological evolution to create a genetic algorithm evolving pinning landscapes to accommodate vortex pinning and determine the best possible configuration of inclusions for two different scenarios: an evolution process starting from a pristine system and one with pre-existing defects to demonstrate the potential for a post-processing approach to enhance critical currents. Furthermore, the presented approach is even more general and can be adapted to address various other targeted material optimization problems.
Recent theoretical and experimental research on low-bulk-pinning superconducting strips has revealed striking dome-like magnetic-field distributions due to geometrical edge barriers. The observed magnetic-flux profiles differ strongly from those in strips in which bulk pinning is dominant. In this paper we theoretically describe the current and field distributions of a superconducting strip under the combined influence of both a geometrical edge barrier and bulk pinning at the strips critical current Ic, where a longitudinal voltage first appears. We calculate Ic and find its dependence upon a perpendicular applied magnetic field Ha. The behavior is governed by a parameter p, defined as the ratio of the bulk-pinning critical current Ip to the geometrical-barrier critical current Is0. We find that when p > 2/pi and Ip is field-independent, Ic vs Ha exhibits a plateau for small Ha, followed by the dependence Ic-Ip ~ 1/Ha in higher magnetic fields.