Effects of anisotropy in the magneto-mechanical responses of seeded growth YBCO samples

Abstract

Seeded growth YBCO material samples, while not single crystals, nevertheless have a preferred orientation of their crystal axes. This can be expected to lead to anisotropic behaviour of material properties such as the critical current density for this material. In this work, we report the exploration of this anisotropy of seeded growth YBCO materials by their magneto-mechanical response in the form of a torque exerted on a cubic sample under an alternating transverse magnetic field. Three mechanisms were explored to explain this torque: the shape effect, the anisotropic effective mass and anisotropic shielding were sought to explain the results.