Hysteretic vortex matching effects in high-$T_c$ superconductors with nanoscale periodic pinning landscapes fabricated by He ion beam projection technique

Abstract

Square arrays of sub-micrometer columnar defects in thin YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ (YBCO) films with spacings down to 300 nm have been fabricated by a He ion beam projection technique. Pronounced peaks in the critical current and corresponding minima in the resistance demonstrate the commensurate arrangement of flux quanta with the artificial pinning landscape, despite the strong intrinsic pinning in epitaxial YBCO films. Whereas these vortex matching signatures are exactly at predicted values in field-cooled experiments, they are displaced in zero-field cooled, magnetic-field ramped experiments, conserving the equidistance of the matching peaks and minima. These observations reveal an unconventional critical state in a cuprate superconductor with an artificial, periodic pinning array. The long-term stability of such out-of-equilibrium vortex arrangements paves the way for electronic applications employing fluxons.

9 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Physical Review Applied

References in corpus (4)

• Fluxonic Cellular Automata
• The Dynamics of Magnetic Vortices in Type II Superconductors with Pinning Sites Studied by the Time Dependent Ginzburg-Landau Model
• Incipient Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in two-dimensional coplanar Josephson junctions
• Generating strong magnetic flux shielding regions in a single crystal of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 using a blind hole array

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Nano-patterning of cuprate superconductors by masked He${}^{+}$ ion irradiation: 3-dimensional profiles of the local critical temperature
• Angular magnetic-field dependence of vortex matching in pinning lattices fabricated by focused or masked helium ion beam irradiation of superconducting YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ thin films
• Tuning electric charge scattering in YBCO single crystals via irradiation with MeV electrons