Zeeman and Orbital Effects of an in-Plane Magnetic Field in Cuprate Superconductors

Abstract

We discuss the effects of a magnetic field applied parallel to the Cu-O ($ab$) plane of the high $T_c$ cuprate superconductors. After briefly reviewing the Zeeman effect of the field, we study the orbital effects, using the Lawrence-Doniach model for layered superconductors as a guide to the physics. We argue that the orbital effect is qualitatively different for in-plane and inter-layer mechanisms for superconductivity. In the case of in-plane mechanisms, interlayer couplings may be modeled as a weak interlayer Josephson coupling, whose effects disappear as $H\to \infty$; in this case Zeeman dominates the effect of the field. In contrast, in the inter-layer mechanism the Josephson coupling {\em is} the driving force of superconductivity, and we argue that the in-plane field suppresses superconductivity and provides an upper bound for $H_{c2}$ which we estimate very crudely.

4 pages with 1 embedded ps figure. Manuscript submitted to the MMM'99 conference

References in corpus (2)

• Frustrated kinetic energy, the optical sum rule, and the mechanism of superconductivity
• Experimental determination of B-T phase diagram of YBa_2Cu_3O_7-d to 150T for B perpendicular to c

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Thermodynamics of d-wave superconductors in a magnetic field
• Inhomogeneous superconducting states in two weakly linked superconducting ultra thin films
• Influence of orbital pair breaking on paramagnetically limited states in clean superconductors