arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C. E. Gough.
We report four-point IV measurements of the c-axis conductivity of mesa structures of 2212-BSCCO, using a system with sub-microsecond resolution along with multi-level pulses. These allow a test to be made for the presence of nonequilibrium effects. Our results suggest simple heating alone is important in measurements of this kind.
A wide-band cryogenic amplifier measurement system for time-resolved four-point IV-characteristic measurements on 2212-BSCCO mesa structures is described. We present measurements which demonstrate the importance of self-heating on 50 ns time scales. Such heating is likely to have been very significant in many previously published measurements, where the reported nonlinear IV characteristics have been used to derive superconducting energy gaps.
Intrinsic c-axis tunnelling in the superconducting state has been measured in zero and finite fields in small mesa structures fabricated on the surface of 2212-BSCCO single crystals. The temperature dependence of the zero-field critical current and quasi-particle conductance is related to microscopic d-wave models in the presence of impurity scattering. The strong field dependence of the c-axis critical current provides information on the correlation of flux pancakes across adjacent superconducting bi-layers. An instability in the IV characteristics is observed below 20K, which accounts for the apparent drop in critical current at low temperatures previously reported.
The complex surface impedance of a number of GdBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-δ}$ single crystals has been measured at 10, 15 and 21 GHz using a cavity perturbation technique. At low temperatures a marked increase in the effective penetration depth and surface resistance is observed associated with the paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic alignment of the Gd spins. The effective penetration depth has a sharp change in slope at the Néel temperature, $T_N$, and the surface resistance peaks at a frequency dependent temperature below 3K. The observed temperature and frequency dependence can be described by a model which assumes a negligibly small interaction between the Gd spins and the electrons in the superconducting state, with a frequency dependent magnetic susceptibility and a Gd spin relaxation time $τ_s $ being a strong function of temperature. Above $T_N$, $τ_s$ has a component varying as $1 / (T - T_N)$, while below $T_N$ it increases $\sim T^{-5}$.
We describe two experimental approaches to circumvent the problem of self-heating in IV measurements on small mesa samples of 2212-BSCCO. Simultaneous dc and temperature measurements have been performed, allowing corrections for heating to be made. Short pulse measurements have also been made, where the IV characteristics and the mesa temperature can be measured on a $μ$s time-scale enabling intrinsic IV characteristics to be derived, even in the presence of appreciable self-heating. Self-heating leads to an appreciable depression of the apparent energy gap and also accounts, in major part, for the s-shaped characteristics often reported at high currents. By correcting for the temperature rise, we derive the intrinsic temperature dependence of the tunnelling characteristics for crystals with a range of doping. Results are compared with recent theoretical models for c-axis transport in d-wave superconductors.
Static and dynamic transport measurements on stacks of intrinsic Josephson junctions on Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta single crystals, near to optimal doping, are presented. The zero bias minimum in dynamic conductance is consistent with a normal state pseudo-gap. At Tc, a critical current develops simultaneously with new features consistent with a gap in the superconducting density states at an already well-established energy. The lack of thermal broadening and the small scale of the features force us to conclude a high degree of coherent interlayer tunneling in both the superconducting and normal states.