The two-dimensional vibrating reed technique: a study of anisotropic pinning in high-temperature superconductors
In this work the anisotropy of the pinning forces of vortices in a-b plane of high temperature-supraconductors was examined. For this purpose vibrating reed with two degrees of freedom of the oscillation was constructed. The pinning forces were examined in single crystals of YBa2Cu3O7 and Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8. Because of the d waves symmetry of the order parameter is expected four-fold anisotropy of the pinning potential. The reed consists of a sapphire fiber which is fast clamped at one end. Other end of the reed glued into a hole of the ruby disc, which is used as a sample holder. The superconducting sample was glued on top of the disc with the c-axis parallel to the sapphire fiber. The dielectric reed is covered by a thin conducting layer for driving the reed electrostatically and detecting its elongation from equilibrium by capacitance method. Thus we have the possibility to vibrate the sample in any direction of the ab plane. The magnetic field directed along the c axis creates vortices in the superconductor. Vibrating of the superconductor leads to the distortion of the flux lines and displacement of the vortices from the point-like oxygen defects, which act as pinning centers. The pinning force leads to additional restoring force which causes a typical magnetic field dependence of the resonance frequency. Such an experimental configuration has never been used before and gives the possibility to study the symmetry of the pinning potential. A mathematical model was developed to describe the effect of anisotropy of the pinning potential on the vibrating reed motion. The two simplest cases of two- and four-fold symmetry of the potential were considered in this model. The experiments with the two-dimensional vibrating reed were carried out with single crystals of YBa2Cu3O7, glued with some angle between the easy axis of the reed (the x direction) and the crystallographic axis a and b. These experiments demonstrated the presence of the two-fold symmetry of the pinning potential of the sample. The anisotropy of the pinning potential manifests itself by the appearance of coupling between main axes of the vibrating reed and by beating in the free oscillations. From the comparison of measurement and mathematical model anisotropy parameter was obtained equal to 10%. For the investigations of the fourfold symmetry of the pinning potential, the crystal was glued so that the crystallographic axes coincide with the easy axes of the reed to eliminate the effect of the two-fold symmetry of the pinning potential. The experiments with YBa2Cu3O7 show that at temperatures lower than 78K the vortices are in a nonequilibrium state. This leads to a flux creep and to a drift of the resonance frequency with time. This prevents the comparison of resonance curves in different directions of oscillations. In Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 single crystals the vortices are in more stable state, but the measurements of the resonance curves in different directions show no indication of the four-fold symmetry. At temperatures below 60 K a strong hysteresis of the resonance frequency and the resonance-oscillation amplitude was found in YBa2Cu3O7 crystals as a function of the magnetic field. The hysteresis of the amplitude caused probably by bending of the reed because of the irreversible magnetisation.
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