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The two critical temperatures conundrum in La$_{1.83}$Sr$_{0.17}$CuO$_4$
by Abhisek Samanta, Itay Mangel, Amit Keren, Daniel P. Arovas, Assa Auerbach
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Assa Auerbach |
| Submission information | |
|---|---|
| Preprint Link: | scipost_202405_00002v1 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2024-05-13 |
| Date submitted: | 2024-05-02 07:39 |
| Submitted by: | Auerbach, Assa |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
|---|---|
| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approaches: | Theoretical, Experimental, Computational, Phenomenological |
Abstract
The in-plane and out-of-plane superconducting stiffness of LSCO rings appear to vanish at different transition temperatures, which contradicts thermodynamical expectation. In addition, we observe a surprisingly strong dependence of the out-of-plane stiffness transition on sample width. With evidence from Monte Carlo simulations, this effect is explained by very small ratio $\alpha$ of interplane over intraplane superconducting stiffnesses. For three dimensional rings of millimeter dimensions, a crossover from layered three dimensional to quasi one dimensional behavior occurs at temperatures near the thermodynamic transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$, and the out of-plane stiffness appears to vanish below $T_{\rm c}$ by a temperature shift of order $\alpha L_a/\xi^\parallel$, where $L_a/\xi^\parallel$ is the sample's width over coherence length. Including the effects of layer-correlated disorder, the measured temperature shifts can be fit by $\alpha=4.1\times 10^{-5}$ near $T_{\rm c}$, which is significantly lower than its previously measured value near zero temperature.
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Author comments upon resubmission
List of changes
1. In the Section 2 (experiments) we added the pragraph;
La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$CuO$_4$ is known to grow in large single crystals allowing significant size reductions. Therefore, a powder of different doping is prepared from stoichiometric ratios of 99.99\% pure CuO, La$_2$O$_3$, and SrCO$_3$ to make feed and seed rods. This powder is turned into a single crystal using an image furnace with four elliptic mirrors focusing 300~W halogen lamps. The growth was stabilised over 100~h without any change of the lamp 59\% power. Growth rate of 1.0~mm/h, down-ward translation of 0.15~mm/h, and rotation in opposite directions of 15~rmp were used. The emerging crystals looked like Fig.~1 of Ref [15]. After the growth, the crystals were annealed in Argon environment at $T = 850$~C for 120~hr to release internal stress. Finally, the crystals were oriented with a Laue camera, and cut into rings with a femtosecond laser cutter.
2. We added Reference:
[15] C. Marin, T. Charvolin, D. Braithwaite, R. Calemczuk, Properties of a large La1.92Sr0.08CuO4+d single crystal grown by the travelling-solvent floating-zone method, Physica C 320 1999 197–205
3. Changed LSCO to full chemical formula.
Published as SciPost Phys. 16, 148 (2024)