Physics and Materials Science of Vortex States, Flux Pinning and Dynamics

This book contains most, but regrettably not all, the papers that were presented at the Advanced Research Study Institute, ASI, held at the Fantasia Hotel, Kusadasi, Turkey, July 26 - August 8, 1998. A powerful incentive to the development of vortex physics in superconductors, that has began with Abrikosov Vortices in Shubnikov's Mixed State, was realized after the discovery of the high-Tc superconductivity. Indeed, a number of the most intriguing phenomena and states of the flux line lattice are observed in high-Tc superconducting materials due to their high anisotropy, intrinsically layered crys tal structure, extremely small coherence length and the possibility of coexistence of superconducting vortex states with high-energy thermal fluctuation. These pe culiarities are demonstrated as the 2D flux line lattice of point-vortices (pan cakes), Josephson vortices or strings in parallel and/or tilted magnetic fields, flux line lattice melting into vortex liquid and its freezing into vortex "solid" (e. g. , crystal-or glass-like) state. It is well known, that the main reason for conditioning of the vortex ensemble state and behavior (except the extrinsic factors, such as applied magnetic field or temperature) is a set of intrinsic/extrinsic superconduct ing material properties caused by the crystal nature and symmetry, atoms ar rangement, anisotropy, as well as by the spectrum of crystal defects, their dimen sions, arrangement and density.

Inhalt
I: Flux Penetration And Pinning.- Vortex Pinning and Jc in High-Tc Superconductors: Advance from Understanding Toward Some Practical Issues.- Magnetic Flux Penetration Into the High-Temperature Superconductors.- Statics and Dynamics of the Flux-Line Lattice in Realistic Geometries.- Pinning Mechanisms in High-Tc Superconductors.- Microstructures and Critical Currents in High-Tc Superconductors.- Mechanical and Squid Measurements on Nb Thin Films: Learning from a Conventional Superconductor.- Flux Instabilities in Current-Carrying Type-II Superconductors.- Magneto-Optical Studies of Magnetization Processes in High-Tc Superconductors.- Experimental Evaluation of the Role of Geometrical and Surface Barriers in BSCCO-2212 Crystals.- Paul Flux Pinning in (RE) Ni2B2C Superconductors.- Scanning Squid Microscopy of Flux Distributions and Motion Near Surface Features in NbSe2.- Anisotropy Induced Crossover from Fractal to Non-Fractal Flux Penetration in High-Tc Thin Films.- Magnetic Flux Noise and Pinning in Low and High-Tc Superconducting Films.- Effect of Pinning Sites on the Decay of the Orientational Order of a Vortex Lattice.- Strong Pinning Mechanisms in High-Tc Superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-? Thin Films.- Influence of Columnar Defects on Critical Currents, Pinning Forces and Irreversibility Fields in (Tm1-xYx)Ba2Cu3O7 Single Crystals up to 50 T.- II: Vortex Dynamics.- Vortex Melting and the Liquid State in YBa2Cu30x.- Vortex Lattice and Dissipation Related Properties at High Frequency in Layered High Tc Superconductors.- The Susceptibility of the Vortex Lattice.- Statistical Mechanics of Vortex Lines.- Josephson Vortex Dynamics in Layered Structures.- High Resolution Specific Heat Experiments on the Vortex Melting Line in MBa2Cu3Ox (M=Y, Dy and Eu)Crystals: Observation ofFirst- and Second-Order Transitions up to 16T.- On the Intermediate State and the Melting Transition in High-Tc BSCCO Single Crystal Superconductors.- Commensurability Oscillations and Smectic Vortex Phase Transition in YBa2Cu3Oy Single Crystals.- 19 F NMR Study of Vortex Lattice Evolution in Fluorinated YBCO System.- Evidence for Two Vortex Species in Niobium Films in Parallel Fields.- Vortex Lattice Melting Probed by Nernst Effect.- Emission of Radiation by Vortex Arrays Motion in DC Transformer.- Vortex Dynamics in Bulk HTS with Levitation Techniques.- Crossover From Pointlike to Linelike Vortex Creep in Superconducting Films with Columnar Defects.- What is the Vortex Lattice Melting, Reality or Fiction?.- III: General.- Extended Ginzburg-Landau Theory of HTS: The Coulping of the Superconducting to a Structural Phase Transition Strongly Enhances Tc.- Anisotropy and Transport Properties in Substituted and Intercalated High Temperature Superconductors Studied by Raman Spectroscopy.- Dynamics of the Phase Separation of LA 2CUO4+x Single Crystals.- Interpretation of the Non-Linear Inductive Response of Superconducting Films.- Magnetooptic Measurements of the Local AC Susceptibility in High-Temperature Superconductors in a Wide Frequency Range.- Plasmons in Nanotube Bundles.- IV: Applcations.- Applications of High Temperature Superconductors.