Paramagnetic Meissner effect and related dynamical phenomena

Abstract

The hallmark of superconductivity is the diamagnetic response to external magnetic field. In striking contrast to this behavior, a paramagnetic response or paramagnetic Meissner effect was observed in ceramic high- T c and in conventional superconductors. The present review is given on this interesting effect and related phenomena. We begin with a detailed discussion of experimental results on the paramagnetic Meissner effect in both granular and conventional superconductors. There are two main mechanisms leading to the paramagnetic response: the so-called d-wave and the flux compression. In the first scenario, the Josephson critical current between two d-wave superconductors becomes negative or equivalently one has a π junction. The paramagnetic signal occurs due to the nonzero spontaneous supercurrent circulating in a loop consisting of odd number of π junctions. In addition to the d-wave mechanism we present the flux compression mechanism for the paramagnetic Meissner effect. The compression may be due to either an inhomogeneous superconducting transition or flux trap inside the giant vortex state. The flux trapping which acts like a total nonzero spontaneous magnetic moment causes the paramagnetic signal. The anisotropic pairing scenario is believed to be valid for granular materials while the flux trap one can be applied to both conventional and high- T c superconductors. The study of different phenomena by a three-dimensional lattice model of randomly distributed π Josephson junctions with finite self-inductance occupies the main part of our review. By simulations one can show that the chiral glass phase in which chiralities are frozen in time and in space may occur in granular superconductors possessing d-wave pairing symmetry. Experimental attempts on the search for the chiral glass phase are analysed. Experiments on dynamical phenomena such as AC susceptibility, compensation effect, anomalous microwave absorption, aging effect, AC resistivity and enhancement of critical current by external electric fields are considered. These phenomena were studied by Monte Carlo and Langevin dynamics simulations which show satisfactory agreement with experiments. We present a resistively shunted junction model describing rich dynamics of Josephson junction networks.