Self-organized criticality in the Bean state in YBa₂Cu₃O₇₋ₓ thin films

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The penetration of magnetic flux into a thin film of YBa₂Cu₃O₇₋ₓ is studied when the external field is ramped slowly. In this case the flux penetrates in bursts or avalanches. The size of these avalanches is distributed according to a power law with an exponent of τ = 1.29(2). The additional observation of finite-size scaling of the avalanche distributions, with an avalanche dimension D = 1.89(3), gives strong indications towards self-organized criticality in this system. Furthermore we determine exponents governing the roughening dynamics of the flux surface using some universal scaling relations. These exponents are compared to those obtained from a standard roughening analysis.