Strachan DR, Sullivan MC, Fournier P, Pai SP, Venkatesan T, Lobb CJ. Do superconductors have zero resistance in a magnetic field?
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 2001;
87:067007. [PMID:
11497849 DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.87.067007]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2000] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
We show that dc voltage versus current measurements of a YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-delta) film in a magnetic field can be collapsed onto scaling functions proposed by Fisher et al. [Phys. Rev. B 43, 130 (1991)] as is widely reported in the literature. We find, however, that good data collapse is achieved for a wide range of critical exponents and temperatures. These results strongly suggest that agreement with scaling alone does not prove the existence of a phase transition. We propose a criterion to determine if the data collapse is valid, and thus if a phase transition occurs. To our knowledge, none of the data reported in the literature meet our criterion.
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