Dependence of the Upper Critical Field on the Defect Concentration in MgB[sub 2] and the Electronic Structure Parameters

Abstract

The upper critical field Hc2 (H ‖ c) of the two-band superconductor MgB2 is studied as a function of the residual resistivity ρn. It is found that the superconductor follows the standard trend: the slope-dHc2/dT of the temperature dependence of Hc2(T) increases with the number of defects. The upper critical field in the clean limit is found, and direct estimations of the parameters of carriers in the 2D σ band (including the Fermi velocity and the coherence length) are made. The contribution of the electron scattering to the magnitude of Hc2 is determined, and the mean free path of electrons in samples with various defect concentrations is estimated. The density of states of σ electrons at the Fermi level is calculated using the dependence of the slope-dHc2/dT on ρn and a band structure model. It is impossible to estimate this density of states directly, because the upper critical field is determined by the carriers of one band, whereas the resistivity depends on the carriers in both bands.