Pinning force and peak effect in superconductor/normal-metal multilayers

Abstract

We analyzed the temperature, the magnetic field, and the normal layer thickness dependencies of the pinning force F p in superconductor/normal metal multilayers in the framework of the Ginzburg-Landau ͑GL͒ theory. In particular, we studied the temperature dependence of the magnetic field H p at which are observed both the peak of the critical current density J c curves versus the external magnetic field H 0 and the maximum pinning force F p max in the F p (H 0 ) dependencies. We show that, well below the critical temperature T c , the magnetic field H p corresponds to the magnetic field H D of the periodic solution of the GL equations and the H D versus temperature dependence well describes the experimental data.

Asymmetry of the critical current and peak effect in superconducting multilayers

“…The interpretation of the peak effect is based on matching considerations, and different models, which reveal the complicated nature of this phenomenon, have been proposed. One is based on the existence of commensurability between the period of the multilayer and the vortex lattice [11][12][13][14][15]. In this case the matching field H m (i.e.…”

The influence of a submicrometre antidot array on the vortex topology and the pinning mechanism in layered superconductors

“…high temperature superconductors (HTS). Similarly to HTS, in LTS artificial multilayers the anisotropy of the superconducting state has also been found to play an important role in the vortex topology, resulting in non-trivial elastic and plastic properties of the vortices [2] which affect practical application parameters such as the upper critical magnetic field H c2 and the critical current density J c [3][4][5][6][7].…”