Thermal depinning and melting of the flux-line lattice in high-T sub c superconductors

Journal Article · Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 1991 · International Journal of Modern Physics B; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1142/S0217979291000419· OSTI ID:6270107

Brandt, E H ^[1]

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1. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Festkoerperforschung, Stuttgart (Germany)

In high-T{sub c} superconductors (HTSC) the thermal fluctuation of the vortex lattice (VL) may become large since the vortex lattice is soft due to the strong overlap of the vortex fields and since the temperature T and b high. It was thus argued that the three-dimensional (3D) vortex lattice is thermally entangled and may melt. This type of transition and the consequences of melting are not clear as yet since the always present pinning of the vortex ores by material inhomogeneities may cause similar disorder. In HTSC the pinning energy may become comparable with k{sub B}T because the coherence length {xi}(vortex radius) is small and t may be high. Therefore, thermally activated depinning competes with possible effects of flux melting, and the irreversibility line in the B-T-plane (B = magnetic field) should better be called depinning line. In this paper it is argued that theories predicting new phases of vortex matter (flux solid, flux liquid, vortex plasma, vortex glass, and hexatic vortex glass) may be improved by replacing the 2D straight-vortex interaction by the correct 3D interaction between all vortex segments.

• OSTI ID: 6270107
• Journal Information: International Journal of Modern Physics B; (United States), Vol. 5; ISSN 0217-9792
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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