Flux line lattice structure and behavior in antiphase boundary free vicinal YBa2Cu3O7-delta thin films

Field angle dependent critical current, magneto-optical microscopy and high resolution electron microscopy studies have been performed on YBa2Cu3O7-delta thin films grown on miscut substrates. High resolution electron microscopy images show that the films studied exhibited clean epitaxial growth with a low density of antiphase boundaries and stacking faults. Any antiphase boundaries (APBs) formed near the film substrate interface rapidly healed rather than extending through the thickness of the film. Unlike vicinal films grown on annealed substrates, which contain a high density of antiphase boundaries, magneto-optical imaging showed no filamentary flux penetration in the films studied. The flux penetration is, however, asymmetric. This is associated with intrinsic pinning of flux strings by the tilted a-b planes and the dependence of the pinning force on the angle between the local field and the a-b planes. Field angle dependent critical current measurements exhibited the striking vortex channeling effect previously reported in vicinal films. By combining the results of three complementary characterization techniques it is shown that extended APB free films exhibit markedly different critical current behavior compared to APB rich films. This is attributed to the role of APB sites as strong pinning centers for Josephson string vortices between the a-b planes. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Magnetocaloric effect and magnetic properties of Tb0.9 Sn0.1 MnO3

The magnetocaloric effect in magnetic materials is of great interest nowadays. In this article we present an investigation about the magnetic properties near the magnetic transition in a polycrystalline sample of a manganite Tb0.9 Sn0.1 MnO3. Particularly, we are interested in describing the nature of the magnetic interactions and the magnetocaloric effect in this compound. The temperature dependence of the magnetization was measured to determine the characteristics of the magnetic transition and the magnetic entropy change was calculated from magnetization curves at different temperatures. The magnetic solid is paramagnetic at high temperatures. We observe a dominant antiferromagnetic interaction below Tn =38 K for low applied magnetic fields; the presence of Sn doping in this compound decreases the Ńel temperature of the pure TbMnO3 system. A drastic increase in the magnetization as a function of temperature near the magnetic transition suggests a strong magnetocaloric effect. We found a large magnetic entropy change Δ SM (T) of about -4 J/kg K at H=3 T. We believe that the magnetic entropy change is associated with the magnetic transition and we interpret it as due to the coupling between the magnetic field and the spin ordering. This relatively large value and broad temperature interval (about 35 K) of the magnetocaloric effect make the present compound a promising candidate for magnetic refrigerators at low temperatures. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.

Demonstration of multi-casting in a 1 × 9 LCOS wavelength selective switch

A multi-functional 1 × 9 wavelength selective switch based on liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) spatial light modulator technology and anamorphic optics was tested at a channel spacing of 100 and 200 GHz, including dynamic data measurements on both single beam deflection and multi-casting to two ports. The multi-casting holograms were optimized using a modified Gerchberg-Saxton routine to design the core hologram, followed by a simulated annealing routine to reduce crosstalk at non-switched ports. The effect of clamping the magnitude of phase changes between neighboring pixels during optimization was investigated, with experimental results for multi-casting to two ports resulting in a signal insertion loss of-7.6 dB normalized to single port deflection, a uniformity of ±0.6%, and a worst case crosstalk of-19.4 dB, which can all be improved further by using a better anti-reflection coating on the LCOS SLM coverplate and other measures. © 2013 IEEE.