S. Ramakrishnan et al., ON THE MAGNETIC STUDY OF THE PEAK EFFECT IN THE ANISOTROPIC SUPERCONDUCTOR 2H-NBSE2 - EVIDENCE FOR REENTRANT BEHAVIOR, Physica. C, Superconductivity, 256(1-2), 1996, pp. 119-141
We present the results of DC and AC magnetization measurements of the
peak effect (PE) at low fields in several samples of an anisotropic su
perconductor, 2H-NbSe2. Close to the T-c(H) line, the PE makes itself
manifest as a dip feature in the in-phase (chi') AC susceptibility dat
a. From our temperature- and field-dependence studies we construct the
loci of this dip feature for H\\c and H\\alpha in the H-T plane. We f
ind that the PE temperature (T-peak) increases as H decreases from the
high-field end to about 200 Oe. However, between 200 Oe to about 30 O
e, T-peak decreases as H decreases from about 150 Oe to 50 Oe. Relying
on the recent observations that the PE phenomenon in the 2H-NbSe2 sys
tem can be associated with the melting of its soft flux-line lattice,
we interpret our central result, namely, the two intersections of T-pe
ak(H) curve with a fixed T line, in terms of reentrant behavior of the
flux-lattice melting line at low fields. We believe that such a reent
rance of the melting line, first proposed on theoretical grounds by D.
R. Nelson in 1988, has not been unambiguously experimentally elucidate
d in any superconducting system prior to our new data on 2H-NbSe2.