Current ramping rate dependence of the critical current in 2 H-NbSe 2 crystals

Abstract

By measuring the critical current at current ramping rate of 2×10 −5 A/s to 5×10 2 A/s we find that at a fixed temperature and magnetic field the critical current in pure 2 H-NbSe 2 increases with increasing current ramping rate. These experiments show that metastable states, which are missed in the usual transport measurements, do exist in the field cooled vortex lattice. We also show that the fast transport technique provides a means of probing the initial vortex lattice.