Plastic energies in layered superconductors

TL;DR

This paper estimates the energy cost of vortex collisions in layered superconductors using the Lawrence-Doniach model, revealing significant differences from continuum models and explaining recent experimental resistance data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of the plastic energy for layered superconductors and demonstrates its importance over continuum models in explaining experimental results.

Findings

Plastic energy scale differs significantly from continuum models.

The model successfully explains recent resistance measurements in Bi-2212.

Layering effects are crucial for understanding vortex dynamics in high-temperature superconductors.

Abstract

We estimate the energy cost associated with two pancake vortices colliding in a layered superconductor. It is argued that this energy sets the plastics energy scale and is the analogue of the crossing energy for vortices in the continuum case. The starting point of the calculation is the Lawrence-Doniach version of the Ginzburg-Landau free energy for type-II superconductors. The magnetic fields considered are along the c-direction and assumed to be sufficiently high that the lowest Landau level approximation is valid. For Bi-2212, where it is know that layering is very important, the results are radically different from what would have been obtained using a three-dimensional anisotropic continuum model. We then use the plastic energy for Bi-2212 to successfully explain recent results from Hellerqvist {\em et al.}\ on its longitudinal resistance.