Attractive interaction between superconducting vortices in tilted magnetic fields

• Published in: Communications physics Vol. 2; no. 1
• Main Authors: Correa, Alexandre, Mompeán, Federico, Guillamón, Isabel, Herrera, Edwin, García-Hernández, Mar, Yamamoto, Takashi, Kashiwagi, Takanari, Kadowaki, Kazuo, Buzdin, Alexander I., Suderow, Hermann, Munuera, Carmen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.12.2019; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Research
• Subjects: 639/301/119/544; 639/766/119/1003; Anisotropy; Condensed Matter; High temperature superconductors; Lattices; Layered materials; Low temperature; Magnetic fields; Magnetic force microscopy; Magnetism; Microscopy; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Superconductivity; Vortices
• DOI: 10.1038/s42005-019-0132-x
• ISSN: 2399-3650

Many practical applications of high T c superconductors involve layered materials and magnetic fields applied on an arbitrary direction with respect to the layers. When the anisotropy is very large, Cooper pair currents can circulate either within or perpendicular to the layers. Thus, tilted magnetic fields lead to intertwined lattices of Josephson and Abrikosov vortices, with quantized circulation across and within layers, respectively. Transport in such intertwined lattices has been studied in detail, but direct observation and manipulation of vortices remains challenging. Here we present magnetic force microscopy experiments in tilted magnetic fields in the extremely quasi-two dimensional superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8 . We trigger Abrikosov vortex motion in between Josephson vortices, and find that Josephson vortices in different layers can be brought on top of each other. Our measurements suggest that intertwined lattices in tilted magnetic fields can be intrinsically easy to manipulate thanks to the mutual interaction between Abrikosov and Josephson vortices. Applications of high temperature superconductors often use layers of materials, and the application of a magnetic field to these layers can generate disk-like pancake vortices within layers crossed with vortices in between layers. The authors present low temperature magnetic force microscopy imaging on a layered superconducting crystal and demonstrate that they are able to manipulate the crossed vortex lattices, hence making this technique an ideal tool for imaging and manipulating superconducting vortices.