Wan, Hebboul, and Garland reply

Abstract

Wan, Hebboul, and Garland Reply: The theoretical work of Horovitz [l] concludes that our recent measurements in BizSrzCaCuzOs-~(BSCCO) [2] can be interpreted in terms of a fluxon transition. His predictions seem to be consistent with our main findings, namely, the existence of two transition temperatures and a pronounced peak in the secondary voltage. A key feature of the Horovitz theory, ho~ever, is the existence of "fluctuating" fluxons which mediate the coupling between thermally excited vortices on adjacent CuO bilayers. Since fluxons are a consequence of the Josephson interaction, his theory also appears to be consistent with our general interpretation of the data. Clearly, more work is needed to establish the exact role of vortex and fluxon excitations in these layered superconductors.

Experimental evidence of the decoupling line in(Bi1.64Pb0.36)SrThopart1, Simon2 2001Phys. Rev. B3030View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…These values are in good agreement with previous reports. 23,[25][26][27] In the normal state, the in-plane resistivity presents a linear temperature dependence while the c-axis resistivity shows a ''semiconductinglike'' behavior. On the other hand, in the superconducting state, the ab curves present two different behaviors: at higher field, the ab resistivity decreases rather smoothly with the temperature and no anomaly is observed while at lower field, a shoulder is observed in the low temperature end of the ab curves.…”

Transformer Configuration in Three Dimensional Josephson Lattices at Zero Magnetic Field

“…The magnetic interactions and screening effects are qualitatively relevant, however, for the interpretation of experiments at weak magnetic fields, H~H, t, like the ones recently conducted in Ref. [6].…”

“…In these experiments a current was fed into one ab face of a single crystal, and both the primary voltage drop (across the same face) and secondary drop (across the opposite face) were measured. Most of the experiments were performed in a magnetic field both in Bi2SrzCaCu20 [2,6] and in YBa2Cu307 [3,4], to probe vortex motion along the crystal c axis through the correlations between the primary and secondary voltages. The experimental results have been interpreted as due to a nonlocal conductivity [7] in the linear regime of the vortex liquid, and due to flux-line cutting phenomena [8] in the nonlinear regime below the irreversibility line.…”

Critical behavior of the flux-line tension in extreme type-II superconductors

“…Spatial fluctuations of a flux line act to reduce this mean-field line tension, however, particularly near the transition temperature. Such entropic corrections to the lower critical field have been computed 2,3 and observed [4][5][6] in the case of hightemperature superconductors, where fluctuation effects are important due to the short coherence lengths and the large transition temperatures that characterize these materials.…”