Thermally activated flux creep in strongly layered high-temperature superconductors

Abstract

Thermal activation energies for single vortices and vortex bundles in the presence of a magnetic field parallel to the layers are calculated. The pinning considered is intrinsic and is due to the strongly layered structure of high-temperature superconductors. The magnetic field and the current dependence of the activation energy are studied in detail. The calculation of the activation energy is used to determine the current-voltage characteristic. It may be possible to observe the effects discussed in this paper in a pure enough sample.