Fully anisotropic superconducting transition in ion-irradiated YBa2Cu3O7-d with a tilted magnetic field

Abstract

We consider the superconducting vortex solid-to-liquid transition in heavy ion-irradiated untwinned YBa2Cu3O7-d single crystals in the case where the magnetic field direction does not coincide with that of the irradiation-induced linear columnar defects. For a certain range of angles, the resistivities measured in three orthogonal spatial directions vanish at the transition as three clearly different powers of reduced temperature. At previously known second-order phase transitions, scaling of physical quantities has either been isotropic or anisotropic in one direction. Thus, our findings yield evidence for a new type of critical behavior with fully anisotropic critical exponents.