Electric-field-driven vortex lattice-glass transition and history effect in RBa2Cu3O7-δ (R = Y,Nd) single crystals

The lattice-glass transition in the solid vortex state is investigated in very clean, naturally twin-free RBa2Cu3O7-delta (R = Y,Nd) single crystals. We demonstrate that this transition is driven by the electric field E in addition to magnetic field and disorder. With increasing sweep rate of the magnetic field dB/dt similar to E, the transition field shifts below its equilibrium value. This interesting and unexpected observation is related to the injection of disorder into the vortex lattice from large electric fields at the sample surface. The fast annealing of introduced disorder in the ordered phase results in an unusual time-dependent decay of the irreversible magnetic moment. The correlation of this metastable behavior with path-dependent magnetic history effects is further discussed.