Dynamic magnetic permeability of a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer

K. S. Pigalski and L. G. Mamsurova

N. N. Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117977 Moscow, Russia

Submitted February 6, 1997; resubmitted May 12, 1997 Fiz. Tverd. Tela St. Petersburg 39, 19431947 November 1997 The eld dependence of the vibrational contribution to the dynamic magnetic permeability high-T c superconducting wafer in a magnetic V (H) is calculated for a thin of thickness d eld parallel to the surface. The resulting curves are plotted on the basis of an exact numerical analysis of the vortex structures both for the thermodynamic-equilibrium vortex lattice and in the presence of pinning forces and the Bean-Livingston surface barrier. It is shown that the V (H) curves are highly sensitive to the size factor (d/ ) and exhibit abrupt changes corresponding to a change in the number of vortex rows. The equilibrium V (H) curve is found to be similar in its general behavior and absolute value obtained with allowance for the distribution of grain sizes and with appropriate values of and ) to the experimental V (H) curve plotted at nitrogen temperature for ne-grained YBa2Cu3Ox with grain diameters D in an increasing magnetic eld. It is established that the main cause of the experimentally observed irreversible behavior of the V (H) curves during cyclic variation of the applied magnetic eld is the existence of a surface barrier to the exit of vortices from the superconductor. The lower limit H min(B) of stability of the mixed state in the presence of an ideal surface barrier in a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer (d ) is determined, along with the range of the vortex state (H max Hmin) for a xed number of vortices in micrometer-size grains of the investigated YBaCuO samples. 1997 American Institute of Physics. S1063-7834 97 00511-X

The present paper is a continuation of a series of articles on the response of a high-temperature high-T c superconductor to an alternating magnetic eld in the presence of a static eld see, e.g., Refs. 14 . The articles in the series differ from many others on the same topic see, e.g., Refs. 5 and 6 in that the investigated quantity is the fundamental mode of the dynamic magnetic permeability ac , which is investigated in a low-frequency 3 kHz , small-amplitude (h 10 Oe) alternating eld parallel to a coexisting static eld H slightly above the critical H c1 . In accordance with the stated frequency and amplitude ranges of the magnetic elds, the experimental data are analyzed theoretically in the quasistatic approximation with allowance for the interaction of vortices with the surface and for the discrete nature of the vortex lattice. It has been shown1 that the real part ac of the dynamic magnetic permeability of a rigid type II superconductor contains three contributions in the general case. The rst two are associated with oscillations of the Meissner current and the occurrence of a critical state near the surface with the entry and exit of vortices under the inuence of the alternating eld , and the third contribution is attributable to the fact that the alternating eld imparts vibrational motion to nearsurface vortices, whose magnetic ux varies as the positions of the vortices vary relative to the surface. The third contribution ( V ) is the most interesting from the scientic standpoint for two reasons. First, it is what determines the structure and dynamics of Abrikosov vortices located near the surface in a layer of thickness is the London penetration depth of the magnetic eld and, as our own previous studies have shown, can be described theoretically, without recourse to any kind of tting parameters, on
1737 Phys. Solid State 39 (11), November 1997

the basis of a numerical analysis of the structure of the vortex lattice.2 Second, this contribution exhibits hysteresis behavior during cyclic variation of the static magnetic eld, but the nature of the hysteresis effect has yet to be explained fully in detail. The problem of the exact numerical calculation of V was rst formulated and solved2 for the case of a half-plane within the framework of the model of a quasistatic, discrete lattice of vortices, taking into account the interaction of the vortices with each other and also with antivortices, the Meissner current, and pinning centers. In particular, it was shown that all variations of the values of V during magnetic eld entry and exit are determined entirely by the variation of the distance from the surface to the rst row of vortices ( 1 ), and the form of the dependence V ( 1 ) was determined in the same study. However, the cause of the difference in the value of 1 during entry and exit of the magnetic eld remained unclear. Ambiguity in the calculations of the vortex congurations as a result of a gradient dB/dx in the interior of the superconductor with allowance for pinning forces made it impossible to solve the problem in the total volume and to reconstruct the behavior of V (H) from rst principles. A more auspicious candidate for investigating the nature of the irreversibility of V (H) would be a thin, highT c superconducting wafer of thickness d . The magnetic induction gradient can be disregarded in this case if the surface of the wafer is oriented in the direction of the magnetic eld. Here we obtain theoretical curves for the eld dependence of the dynamic magnetic permeability in the case of a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer, based on a numerical analysis of vortex structures both for the thermodynamic
1997 American Institute of Physics 1737

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equilibrium reversible state and under conditions that render the investigated curves irreversible, and we compare the theoretical V (H) curves with experimental plots of the permeability of ne-grained YBa2Cu3Ox YBaCuO samples ; this comparison provides a with grain diameters D foundation for explaining the hysteresis effect of V (H) during cyclic variation of the eld.

N 0

n 1 m,k
k 0 n p

1 kK 1 1 kx n x p
p,n,k,m

p,n,k,m /

dk

sinh x p / cosh d/2

0,

where
p,n,k,m

1. THEORY: THERMODYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM

For a sample in a magnetic eld H H h sin( t) the vibrational contribution to the dynamic magnetic permeability is given by the expression1
V

dk

1 kx n x p

a 4

a 4

2 1/2

ma

1 h

2 /

dt cos
0

dB V , dt

where B V is the part of the induction associated with the vibrational motion of the vortices, and is the frequency. Let a type II superconducting wafer be perpendicular to d/2, d/2 , and the x axis and occupy the region of space let the magnetic eld be directed along the z axis. We assume in accordance with the standard model of the structure of the vortex lattice in a thin wafer7,8 that the magnetic ux lines vortices form rows symmetrically positioned along the planes of the wafer about its axis (x 0) and that the vortices have identical spacing a within all the rows, but the positions of the vortices in adjacent rows are shifted relative to one another along the y axis by the amount a/2. Making use of the fact that the vortex ux is smaller than the magnetic ux 0 in a thin wafer whose thickness is commensurate with the penetration depth of the magnetic eld,9 we write the following equation for B V :
N

and K i is the ith-order Macdonald function modied Bessel function of the third kind . The rst term in Eq. 4 takes into account the forces exerted on the vortex by other vortices and the eld of the images, and the second term characterizes the forces produced by the Meissner screening current; exact expressions obtained in the London approximation10 are used in Eq. 4 . Next we calculate the Gibbs energy density G of the resulting vortex conguration relative to the energy of the wafer in the same magnetic eld, but without the vortices:9
N N p b V 2H

8 aD

1
p 1

p 1

cosh x p / cosh d/2

The rst term in Eq. 5 describes the interaction of the vortices with each other and with the image eld, where the total eld in the core of a vortex in the pth row has the form
p bV 0

2
N

K 0 1/

0.3835

BV

ad

1
i 1

cosh x i / cosh d/2

2
n 1 k,m
m 0 n p

1 kK 0

p,n,k,m /

Here N is the number of vortex rows in the wafer, and x i is the distance from the ith row to the axis of the wafer. From Eqs. 1 and 2 we obtain
N 0 V

ad

cosh d/2

i 1

dx i dH

sinh x i /
H H

Equation 3 can be used to calculate V if the structure of the vortex lattice (x i ,N,a) and its mobility for a small variation of the eld are known. We seek the equilibrium vortex conguration numerically by the following procedure. For given values of a and N we nd the exact positions of the rows in the wafer from the condition of balance between forces exerted on a vortex by all other vortices, antivortices, and the Meissner screening current. To satisfy the boundary conditions with allowance for the proximity of a particular vortex with coordinates (x i ,y i ) to both faces of the wafer, we introduce a system of vortex images directed: along the external eld, with coordik , k 0 ; directly opposite to nates (2dk x i ,y i ) the eld, with coordinates d(2k 1) x i ,y i ( k ). On this basis the condition of balance of the forces on a vortex in the pth row now has the form
1738 Phys. Solid State 39 (11), November 1997

Varying the parameter a while preserving the balance of forces, we nd its value minimizing the Gibbs energy density for given N. Then, comparing the values of G min for different numbers of rows, we nd the number N corresponding to the most thermodynamically favorable vortex structure. The results of the calculations show that the minimum Gibbs energy, as a rule, corresponds to a number N for which the vortex lattice in the interior of the wafer is most nearly triangular. However, exact conformity to a triangular lattice occurs only for large N Ref. 8 . For small numbers N, as the magnetic eld is increased, the parameter a oscillates, tracking the formation of each subsequent row of vortices Fig. 1a . It is evident from Fig. 1b how the position of the vortex row closest to the surface changes in this process. Accordingly, we observe oscillations of both the function M (H) and the investigated V (H) curve Figs. 1c and 1d . These gures show the M (H) and V (H) curves for the cases d/ 2 and d/ 4. We see that the V (H) curves depend signicantly on the ratio d/ , and to an even greater degree than the magnetization. It is instructive to compare the behavior of the calculated thermodynamic V (H) curves
K. S. Pigalski and L. G. Mamsurova 1738

FIG. 1. Distance between vortices along the rows a , position of the row closest to the surface relative to the axis of the wafer b , magnetization c , and vibrational contribution to the dynamic magnetic permeability d vs magnetic eld. The calculations are carried out for a wafer with 0.35 m in the thermodynamic equilibrium state. The numbers indicate the number of rows in the wafer. The solid curves correspond to d/ 4, and the dashed curves to d/ 2. The dot-dash line represents the position of the surface of the wafer.

obtained for a thin superconducting wafer with the experimentally observed behavior for ne-grained high-T c superconductor samples.

2. COMPARISON WITH EXPERIMENT. THE INCLUSION OF PINNING AND THE SURFACE BARRIER

The experimental investigation of ac(H) for negrained YBa2Cu3Ox samples has shown that they differ from single crystals, the targeted contribution of vibrational motion of the vortices to V (H) being observed in almost pure form, because the Bean contribution to ac from the gradient of the vortices in the volume of the grains is negligible in grains having a scale . The details of the experimental procedure are described in Ref. 1. Figure 2 shows experimental plots of V (H) for ne-grained YBa2Cu3Ox at 78 K, corresponding to entry and exit of the magnetic eld and exhibiting hysteresis. The observed form of the dependence is typical of YBa2Cu3Ox samples with any microstructure, including single crystals.14 Bearing in mind that a certain statistical spread of grain sizes exists in a real sample and that V depends strongly on the ratio d/ , we obtain a theoretical V (H) curve suitable for comparison with experiment. We use the following model representations. We model the sample by a set of thin plates oriented along the external magnetic eld, with a spread of thicknesses corresponding to the grain diameters information on such a distribution has been obtained from electron-microscope data and, to facilitate mathematical processing, can be represented by a normal Gaussian distribution with an average diameter d 0.32 m and variance d . Averaging the theoretical values of V (H) over the diameters d, we nally obtain the calculated curve 1 in Fig.
1739 Phys. Solid State 39 (11), November 1997

2 using the value 0.38 m obtained from processing the M (H) curves at 78 K by a procedure similar to one described in Ref. 11 . Clearly, the abrupt changes along the calculated V (H) curve smooth out after averaging over the grain diameters, and the general behavior and absolute value of the curve then come close to the experimental eld-entry curve. This fact is especially noteworthy for its implication that when vortices enter the sample, the resulting B(H) curve is most likely close to the equilibrium curve Fig. 3 , and the potential inuence of such factors as pinning or a surface barrier on this process must be extremely insignicant. We note that the behavior of the thermodynamic B(H) curve for a thin wafer differs from the corresponding curve for an unbounded sample curves 1 and 4 in Fig. 3, respectively both in the occurrence of kinks corresponding to entry of the next row of vortices and also in the nonzero value of B in elds H H c1 . The latter consideration is associated with the increased inuence of the surface layer of the superconductor when penetrated by the magnetic eld. The slope of the B(H) curve in this range corresponds to an effective magwhich can be determined netic permeability eff , experimentally.12 Taking into account the pronounced irreversibility of the experimental V (H) curve, we introduce pinning and a surface barrier as possible sources of such irreversibility bearing in mind the possible emergence of the latter when vortices exit from the superconductor . To account for the inuence of pinning, we introduce the pinning force F p in the force balance equation, estimating its magnitude from the equation F p 4 j c /c c is the speed of light with a critical current j c 105 A/cm2 typical of negrained YBaCuO at nitrogen temperatures12 we note that
K. S. Pigalski and L. G. Mamsurova 1739

FIG. 2. Vibrational contribution to the dynamic magnetic permeability vs magnetic eld. Inset: Magnetization vs magnetic eld for the same sample. The various point symbols represent experimental results for ne-grained YBa2Cu3Ox (T 78 K) during entry circles and exit triangles of the magnetic eld. The solid curves represent the results of calculations with allowance for the distribution of grain diameters : 1 for the thermodynamic equilibrium state; 2 with allowance for the surface barrier to vortex exit H min B . The dashed curves represent the same calculations with the introduction of a pinning force whose direction corresponds to the direction of: 3 magnetic eld entry; 4 magnetic eld exit.

FIG. 3. Magnetic induction of a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer (d/ 4, 0.35 m vs external magnetic eld with the latter parallel to the planes of the wafer. Solid curves: 1 calculated for the thermodynamic equilibrium state of the vortex lattice; 2 lower limit of stability of the vortex state for an ideal barrier in the superconductor wafer; 3 curve correspond2 ing to the ratio H min B , used in calculating V (H) for eld exit 0/4 see curve 2 in Fig. 2 . Dashed curve shown for comparison : 4 thermodynamic equilibrium curve for an unbounded sample, calculated according to an equation in Ref. 4. The dot-dash curve corresponds to B H. The arrows indicate the B(H) curves corresponding to a constant number of vortices in the transition region.

here the pinning force is much smaller than other forces included in our analysis, i.e., pinning is a slight perturbation of the equilibrium vortex state . Under the inuence of the pinning force the positions of the vortex rows move closer to the surface upon eld entry and away from it upon eld exit, relative to thermodynamic equilibrium; the resulting hysteresis is opposite in sign to its experimental counterpart and is much narrower than actually observed its width can be estimated by comparing curves 1 and 3 in Fig. 2 . This result indicates that the pinning force cannot possibly account for the observed irreversibility. To correctly describe the exit of vortices, we need to bear in mind the possible existence of a surface barrier and to examine the lower bound of the range of stability of the mixed state in a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer. A similar problem has been solved previously13 for a halfplane. The existence of a barrier to vortex entry rests on the assumption that the number of vortices remains invariant as the eld decreases from a value H H c1 in a certain transition range of elds. Calculations show that the vortices migrate toward the surface in this case, and the slope of B(H) in the transition zone is close to the slope of the initial part of the thermodynamic curve, equal to eff Fig. 3 . This process continues until the repulsive force of the Meissner current becomes smaller than the force of interaction between vortices. In this eld H H min the barrier vanishes, allowing the vortices to exit from the sample. The corresponding H min(B)
1740 Phys. Solid State 39 (11), November 1997

curve for an ideal barrier is shown in Fig. 3 curve 2 . The lower limit of stability of the mixed state corresponds to the position of the row immediately adjacent to the surface, where it exists at the inection point of the Gibbs energy, i.e., at the point of instability of relatively small variations of H. It is readily shown that the permeability V becomes innite in this case. Inasmuch as the experimental values of V (H) upon exit of the eld are completely nite, we can conclude that an ideal barrier to vortex exit is also nonexistent in a real high-T c superconducting sample. The position of the lower limit of stability of the mixed state in the real investigated ne-grained YBaCO sample can be determined more precisely on the basis of the experimental results from measurements not only of V (H), but also of the magnetization M (H) for the given sample see the inset to Fig. 2 . The calculated curve 2 in Fig. 2 plotted with allowance where for size averaging corresponds to H min B /4 2 11 Oe . It is evident from this gure that 0 such vortex-exit elds provide satisfactory agreement between the theoretical and experimental curves is both for V (H) and for M (H). Also evident is the very slight shift of curve 2 when a pinning force of the same magnitude as for vortex entry is taken into account curve 4 . The results of our calculations, therefore, indicate that the presence of a barrier to vortex exit somewhat smaller in magnitude than for an ideal superconductor can be attributed to the experimentally observed irreversibility of the
K. S. Pigalski and L. G. Mamsurova 1740

V (H) curves like that of the M (H) curves in the vicinity of the maximum . Here, as mentioned above, vortex entry corresponds more nearly to the establishment of an essentially equilibrium vortex lattice. The causes of the diminution of the surface barrier to the point where it all but vanishes for vortex entry are open to several hypotheses in application to ne-grained YBaCuO at 78 K. In particular, a basis for this phenomenon can be found both in the thermally activated transition of vortex laments across the surface barrier and in the inuence of structural inhomogeneities on the sample grain surfaces.14,15 In summary, our calculations of vortex structures associated with entry and exit of the magnetic eld in a thin, high-T c superconducting wafer with the applied magnetic eld parallel to the surface both for the thermodynamic equilibrium state and taking into account the surface barrier and pinning forces, which enable us to obtain experimentally consistent theoretical eld dependences of the vibrational contribution to the dynamic magnetic permeability V (H) and the magnetization M (H), have been instrumental in the solution of two problems. First, we have established the maximum and minimum external elds for which a mixed state is established with a given number of vortices in the grains of a real ne-grained YBaCuO sample at nitrogen temperatures. We nd that the upper bound H max(B) of the range of the mixed state is close to the corresponding thermodynamic curve, whereas the lower bound H min(B) corresponds more nearly to the curve B H. In the second place, the information obtained here leads to the assumption that the presence of a barrier to the exit of vortices from the superconductor is responsible for the experimentally observed irreversible behavior of the dynamic magnetic permeability of YBaCuO during cyclic variation of the magnetic eld.

The authors are grateful to N. G. Trusevich for furnishing experimental data from measurements of the static magnetization, and also to V. P. Sakun, K. I. Kugel, and A. L. Razman for valuable discussions. This work has received support from the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research Project No. 95-02-05398 and from the Scientic Council on Superconductivity, RNTP ANFKS Project No. 93122 .
L. G. Mamsurova, K. S. Pigalsky, V. P. Sakun, and L. G. Scherbakova, Physica C 200, 175 1992 . 2 L. G. Mamsurova, K. S. Pigalski, V. P. Sakun, and L. G. Shcherbakova, Fiz. Tverd. Tela St. Petersburg 37, 2954 1995 Phys. Solid State 37, 1630 1995 . 3 L. G. Mamsurova, K. S. Pigalski, and V. P. Sakun, Fiz. Nizk. Temp. 22, 1322 1996 Low Temp. Phys. 22, 1005 1996 . 4 V. P. Sakun and K. S. Pigalski, Khim. Fiz. 152, 3 1996 . 5 T. Ishida and R. B. Goldfarb, Phys. Rev. B 41, 8937 1990 . 6 L. M. Fisher, I. F. Voloshin, N. M. Makarov, V. A. Yampolskii, E. Lopes-Cruz, and F. Perez-Rodriguez, J. Appl. Phys. 75, 7414 1994 . 7 V. V. Shmidt, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 61, 398 1971 Sov. Phys. JETP 34, 211 1971 . 8 A. I. Rusinov and G. S. Mkrtchyan, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 61, 773 1971 Sov. Phys. JETP 34, 413 1971 . 9 V. V. Shmidt and G. S. Mkrtchyan, Usp. Fiz. Nauk 112, 459 1974 Sov. Phys. Usp. 17, 170 1974 . 10 x P. G. De Gennes, Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys Benjamin, New York, 1966 Russian trans., Mir, Moscow, 1968 . 11 A. S. Krasilnikov, L. G. Mamsurova, K. K. Pukhov, N. G. Trusevich, and L. G. Shcherbakova, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 109, 1006 1996 JETP 82, 542 1996 . 12 A. A. Vishnev, A. S. Krasilnikov, L. G. Mamsurova, N. G. Trusevich, and L. G. Shcherbakova, Sverkhprovodimost KIAE 7, 630 1994 . 13 F. F. Ternovski and L. N. Shekhata, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 62, 2297 1972 Sov. Phys. JETP 35, 1202 1972 . 14 L. Burlachkov, M. Konczykowski, Y. Yeshurun, and F. Holtzberg, J. Appl. Phys. 70, 5759 1991 . 15 F. Bass, V. D. Freilikher, B. Ya. Shapiro, and M. Shvartser, Physica C 260, 231 1996 . Translated by James S. Wood
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