Vortex Lattice Anisotropy in Magnesium Diboride n n
Vortex Lattice Anisotropy in Magnesium Diboride n n n Morten Ring Eskildsen Department of Physics University of Notre Dame
Collaborators R. Cubitt and C. D. Dewhurst Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France N. Jenkins, M. Kugler, G. Levy, S. Tanaka and Ø. Fischer DPMC, University of Geneva, Switzerland J. Jun, S. M. Kazakov and J. Karpinski Solid State Physics Laboratory, ETHZ, Zürich, Switzerland This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Ma. NEP and the Swiss Federal Office BBW.
VL Anisotropy in Uniaxial Superconductors • Rotating applied field away from axis distorts vortex lattice. • Vortices in unit cell lies on ellipse. • Distortion determined by anisotropy of penetration depth and coherence length L. J. Campbell, M. M. Doria and V. G. Kogan, Phys. Rev. B 38, 2439 (1988).
Mg. B 2: A Two-Band Superconductor s-band p-band J. Nagamatsu et al. , Nature 410, 63 (2001). H. J. Choi et al. , Nature 418, 758 (2002).
Vortex Lattice Imaging by SANS • The reciprocal lattice is directly observed in diffraction patterns measured on 2 D detector. • VL distortion due to uniaxial anisotropy? • VL reflectivity determined by superconducting penetration depth and coherence length. • Measurements done at d 22 at Institut Laue Langevin (ILL).
Form Factor Measurements • Measurement of absolute scattered intensity allows determination of characteristic lengthscales.
Vortex Lattice Anisotropy • Mg. B 2 is uniaxial superconductor. • Measurements done with field rotated away from c axis. • VL anisotropy reflects gl. 2 K, 0. 5 T
Field & Temperature Dependence of g • Anisotropy increases with both field and temperature. • Increase with temperature due to thermally mixing of p and s bands. • Increase with field due to suppresseion of p-band is expected to saturate at g = g. H ~ 6. • Temperature dependence in good agreement with theoretical prediction.
A Couple of Problems… • Anisotropy found by STS with H c is smaller than SANS extrapolation. • SANS results on Mg. B 2 powder gives upper limit on g = 1. 4 at 0. 5 T/2 K, well below result for single crystals. • NMR at 2 T and 5 K indicates gl close to 1 (W. Halpering, Northwestern). R. Cubitt et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 157002 (2003).
…More Problems: A Vortex Lattice Reorientation Transition • Low field orientation with VL-planes perpendicular to a-axis. • Reorientation quantified by angular split of the two degenerate domain orientations. • At 60 split the VL is aligned parallel to a-axis, and a single domain is reformed. • As field is rotated away from c axis the transition field remains essentially unchanged, but transition becomes 1 st order.
VL Anisotropy above Reorientation Trans. • Above reorientation transition Bragg peaks no longer lies on an ellipse! • VL anisotropy drops to ~1 (no anisotropy) above reorientation transition. • May be effect of slight misalignment between crystalline axes and field rotation axis. • VL anisotropy no longer reflects gl !? !
Summary • Two-band superconductivity in Mg. B 2 is now well established, with the smaller gap associated with the 3 D p-band the larger gap with the 2 D s-band. • SANS form factor measurements show a suppression of superconductivity in the pband with increasing field, in quantitative agreement with results obtained by STS. The supression of the p-band leads to structural changes of the VL: • 1. With H || c, the VL undergoes a 30 o reorientation in the field range 0. 5 - 0. 9 T. • 2. Below the reorientation transition, the VL anisotropy was determined as a function of field and temperature and found to increases with both temperature and field. We believe that this reflects a changing penetration depth anisotropy. • 3. Above reorientation transition the VL is rhombic and isotropic, and apparently no longer influenced by penetration dept anisotropy!
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