Excitation of Josephson Plasma Resonance in BISMUTH(2) STRONTIUM(2) Calcium COPPER(2) OXYGEN(8+DELTA)

A novel magnetic resonance is observed in Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+ delta} single crystals exposed to microwave radiation (26 to 95 GHz) in the presence of a magnetic field. The resonance exhibits unconventional field and temperature dependence. At a fixed temperature below the melting transition of the vortex solid, T_ {m}(B), the resonance frequency decreases with the applied field and displays a power-law dependence, viz. omega~ B^{-mu }. The exponent was found to be 0.8 within 10% across all samples and temperatures studied. However, when the temperature is increased above T_ {m}(B), mu becomes sample dependent and is equal to 0.64 and 1.08 for the two samples studied. At fixed microwave frequencies, the resonance field, B_0 increases exponentially with temperature to a maximum at T_{m }(B) and decreases slowly with temperature above. We attribute the resonance to Josephson plasma oscillations excited along the sample c-axis. The model explains many features of the experiment. Recently, Bulaevskii et al. proposed an explanation for the field dependence of the Josephson plasma frequency. By assuming that disorder in vortex pancakes is caused by strong pinning at low temperatures, the authors obtained the power-law dependence of omega on B, which agrees with the experiment. Rotating the microwave E-field, { bf E}_{rf} relatively to the sample, we find maximum resonance absorption when {bf E}_{rf} has the maximum projection along the sample c-axis, and minimum when there is none. This identification of {bf E}_{rf} parallel to the sample c-axis as the one responsible for the resonance, supports the Josephson plasma hypothesis. The strongest evidence for the Josephson plasma model is obtained by tilting the magnetic field close to alignment with the ab-plane of the crystal. In that case, an unusual re-entrant cusp in B_0 is observed when the tilt angle is in the range -5.5^circ to 5.5^circ. This is consistent with Bulaevskii et al.'s calculation. They propose that pancake vortices introduced, when the field is tilted out-of-plane, arrange themselves in a zigzag manner along c which helps recover the coupling that is degraded by Josephson vortices parallel to the layers. Fitting our data to their calculation, we obtain an anisotropy parameter gamma=400-420 and a zero field Josephson plasma frequency of 5.3 cm^ {-1}..