Origin of the high DC transport critical current density for the MgB2 superconductor

Abstract

If the critical current density Jc is very high for a superconductor, then estimating its value from transport measurements is not very easy. In such cases, the value of Jc, called Jcm for magnetic Jc, is usually obtained from the measured magnetic hysteresis loop measurements by using a proper critical state model such as Bean's model (ref. 1). However, for bulk polycrystalline high temperature superconductors, the values of Jcm are much higher than the values, Jct, obtained from the transport measurements. This is due to the fact that the Jct is interrupted by weakly linked grain boundaries. However, for the recently discovered superconductor MgB2 (ref. 2), the grain boundary effect is negligible and these two values seem to coincide. Moreover, Jc increases drastically with decreasing the temperature. Consequently, the critical current densities for bulk wires can be very high, suggesting that numerous applications for the power transport. In this letter, we report the origin of the large current carrying capability of MgB2 based on direct measurements of the current-voltage relation in high magnetic fields. A strong coupling between the grains may be one reason for the absence of the weak link effect. Another reason may be the fact that, instead of a weak pinning mechanism such as thermally activated flux hopping, strong pinning due to a vortex glass phase is found in this material. The vortex phase diagram obtained from transport measurements shows that, in H-T space, a wide region below the Hc2 line is covered by a vortex glass phase.