VOLUME 72, NUMBER 1 P H Y S I C A L REVIEW LETTERS
Song et ai Reply: Reference [1] is correct in that the va-
lidity of the theoretical analysis presented in our Letter
[2] is limited to the low temperature region where the
amplitude of vortex fluctuations is small. At high tem-
perature, above the depinning temperature, it is possible
that the physical diffusion of vortices (in addition to
thermal fluctuations) affects the magnetic field distribu-
tion measured by the NMR spectrum. However, below
this temperature, diffusion is suppressed and only the vor-
tex fluctuations survive. This low temperature region, in
fact, is the main focus of our Letter.
Based only on the measurements of the magnetic field
distribution from the NMR spectrum [3], it is difficult to
distinguish between two scenarios where the dominant
source of narrowing of the field distribution is diffusion of
the vortices or the positional fluctuations of vortices
around their thermal equilibrium. If we take the diffu-
sion constant D from Ref. [1] to be greater than 10 ~ 10
m2/s, for T> 20 K, the distance 8 of diffusion during the
NMR experiment, / ~ 1 0 0 /is, is given by 8^VDF
388
1000 A. This distance is 5 times the flux lattice spac-
ing at our field of 3.5 T. Even at 5 K, this would be 2.5
times the flux lattice spacing. Under these circumstances,
all nuclear spins would experience the same averaged
field and not much broadening from the flux lattice could
be expected. The fact that significant NMR broadening
is generally observed in superconductors below their tran-
sition temperature suggests that the field inhomogeneity
is static on the time scale of the NMR measurement and
the diffusion coefficient is likely not as large as given by
Ref. [1] at low temperatures. This is confirmed by the
fact that the transverse relaxation, \/T2, the decay rate of
the transverse nuclear magnetization ( » 10 kHz at 6 K)
is much less than the NMR linewidth ( « 3 0 0 kHz at 6
K). The physical process of vortex diffusion is stochastic,
very similar to atomic diffusion in an inhomogeneous field
for which the diffusion constant D can be determined
from 7*2 measurement. Using our measurements of 7*2
0031-9007/93/72(0/177(1)$06.00
© 1993 The American Physical Society
3 JANUARY 1994
rather than the linewidth gives a bound on the diffusion
coefficient 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than that of
Ref. [1]. Consequently, we infer that at low tempera-
tures, local dynamics of the flux lattice is a more likely
scenario than vortex diffusion.
The NWU part of this work was supported by the Sci-
ence and Technology Center for Superconductivity under
NSF Cooperative Agreement No. DMR 91-20000.
Y. Q. Song,1 W. P. Halperin,1 L. Tonge,2 T. J. Marks,2
M. Ledvij/ V. G. Kogan,3 and L. N. Bulaevskii4
department of Physics
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois 60208
department of Chemistry
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois 60208
3
Ames Laboratory and Department of Physics and Astronomy
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011-3020
4
Los Alamos National Laboratory, T-l 1 B262
Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
Received 26 August 1993
PACS numbers: 74.25.Nf, 74.40.+k
[1] J. T. Moonen, D. Reefman, and H. B. Brom, preceding
Comment, Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 176 (1994).
[2] Y.-Q. Song etal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 3127 (1993).
[3] The main argument for low temperaturefluctuationswas
based primarily on our measurements of the magnetic
field shift at the saddle points of flux lattice [2l. The
linewidth measurements, as pointed out in Ref. [ll, are
less accurate. Further complication to the interpretation
of the linewidth data can be due to effects of pinning on
thefielddistribution. The intensity of the impurity peak
is quite low in our sample and it did not affect the deter-
mination of saddle point field shift at low temperatures.
At high temperature, this impurity peak is well separated
from the main resonance.
177