Thermodynamics of vortices in disordered superconductors

The emergence of the High Temperature Superconductors (HTSC) has not only profoundly affected solid state physics, it has also provoked a revolution in the understanding of the behaviour of quantified vortex lines that traverse the superconducting material when this is placed in a magnetic field. Owing to the conspiracy of extreme parameter values characterizing High Temperature Superconductors, all physical properties of flux vortices, their dynamics, and their phase diagram in the (B,T) plane could now be studied in hitherto inaccessible detail. Thus, it was established that the true phase transition to the superconducting state occurs nt at the upper critical field Bc2, but at the melting transition of the vortex ensemble. In disordered superconductors, an entirely new phenomenology, linked to flux line pinning by material defects, appeared. New thermodynamic vortex phases have been postulated, and sometimes found. The aim of this document is to take a critical look at the mechanism leading to the melting transition of the vortex ensemble in HTSC, as well as at the role played by material disorder on vortex physics. First and foremost, the materials under study are characterized. that is, not only are their fundamental parameters such as the critical temperature, critical fields, and penetration depth established, but also their purity and the nature of the disorder they contain. In this, the present work finds all its meaning in having been performed at the Laboratoire des Solides Irradies, whose primary goal is to investigate the role of material disorder introduced by irradiation on materials and physics. We then study the vortex melting transition in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 by a method that is peculiar to layered superconductors: the Josephson Plasma Resonance. This technique will allow us to evaluate the average thermal displacements of the vortex lines in the vicinity of the transition, in as-grown as well as in irradiated crystals. The role of crystalline disorder is also studied from a point of view that was entirely new at the time of publishing: the study of the change in thermodynamic quantities provoked by crystalline disorder, rather than that of their effect on transport quantities. finally, we conclude on how these two approaches can help us understand the flux line phase diagram in superconductors with artificially introduced controlled disorder. (author)