Anisotropic temperature-dependent current densities in vicinal YBa2Cu3O7-δ -: art. no. 220507

Thin epitaxial films of YBa2Cu3O7-delta grown on vicinal cut substrates exhibit a substantial anisotropy of the critical current density j(c) in the film plane. By means of a quantitative magneto-optical analysis it is possible to investigate the current densities along different directions independently from each other. We performed a detailed analysis of the temperature dependence of the critical currents in the range T=5-90 K and found a completely different behavior of j(c)(T) along different directions. Describing the data by a step-wise power-law ansatz allows us to distinguish between different current limiting mechanisms.