Lower critical fields and the anisotropy in PrFeAsO single crystals

Okazaki, Ryuji*; Konczykowski, M.*; Van der Beek, C. J.*; Kato, Tomonari*; Hashimoto, Kenichiro*; Shimozawa, Masaaki*; Shishido, Hiroaki*; Yamashita, Minoru*; Ishikado, Motoyuki; Kito, Hijiri*; Iyo, Akira*; Eisaki, Hiroshi*; Shamoto, Shinichi  ; Shibauchi, Takasada*; Matsuda, Yuji*

We report the lower critical fields measurements on Fe-based oxipnictide PrFeAsO single crystals for and -planes. To avoid the difficulty of determinations due to the flux pinning, we developed a novel method using a miniature hall-sensor array which can evaluate the local magnetic induction ai each sensor position. The hall sensor which is placed on the edge of the crystal clearly resolves the first flux penetration from the Meissner state. The temperature dependence of for is well scaled by the in-plane penetration depth and is consistent with a full-gap superconducting state. The anistropy of at low temperatures is estimated to be 3, which is much smaller than of . This indicates the multiband superconductivity, in which the active bands for superconductivity are more two-dimensional.