Temperature behavior of the magnetoresistance hysteresis in a granular high-temperature superconductor: Magnetic flux compression in the intergrain medium

Granular high-temperature superconductors (HTSs) are characterized by the hysteretic behavior of magnetoresistance. This phenomenon is attributed to the effective field in the intergrain medium of a granular HTS. At the grain boundaries, which are, in fact, weak Josephson couplings, the dissipation is observed. The effective field in the intergrain medium is a superposition of the external field and the field induced by magnetic moments of HTS grains. Meanwhile, analysis of the field width of the R(H) magnetoresistance hysteresis ΔH = H_dec  −  H_inc at H_dec = const, where H_inc and H_dec are increasing and decreasing branches of the R(H) hysteretic dependence, shows that the effective field in the intergrain medium exceeds by far both the external field and the field induced by magnetic moments of HTS grains. This situation suggests the magnetic flux compression in the intergrain medium because of the small length of grain boundaries, which amounts to ∼1 nm, i.e., is comparable with the coherence length and corresponds to Josephson tunneling in HTS materials. In this work, using the previously developed approach, we examine experimental data on the magnetoresistance and magnetization hysteresis in the granular YBa₂Cu₃O₇ HTS compound in the range from 77 K to the critical temperature. According to the results obtained, the degree of magnetic flux compression determined by the parameter α in the expression for the effective field B_eff(H) = H − 4π M(H) α in the intergrain medium remains constant over the investigated temperature range. All the features of the observed evolution of the R(H) hysteretic dependences are explained well within the proposed approach when the expression for B_eff(H) contains the experimental M(H) magnetization data and the parameter α of about 20–25. The latter is indicative of the dominant effect of magnetic flux compression in the intergrain medium on the transport properties of granular HTS materials.