Anisotropy-enhanced vortex pinning by randomly splayed extended defects in high-T_c superconductors

Abstract

Using uniformly splayed pinning landscape as a tool in the family of Hg-based cuprate superconductors, we (i) demonstrate that such splayed correlated disorder pins vortices stronger in materials with higher anisotropy and (ii) find a consistent description of this systematic trend through an effective rescaling scheme. This scheme demonstrates that in highly anisotropic superconductors extended pinning defects need not be aligned for optimal pinning.