Paper detail

Comment on 'Diamagnetism and Cooper pairing above Tc in cuprates'

It is shown that the magnetization rounding measured by L. Li and coworkers above the superconducting transition in optimally doped YBa2Cu3O7-d crystals under magnetic fields up to 14 T [Phys. Rev. B 81, 054510 (2010), arXiv:0906.1823] may be explained at a phenomenological level in terms of the mean field Gaussian-Ginzburg-Landau (GGL) approach for layered superconductors. This result challenges the claims of L. Li and coworkers, who write '[...] we are observing the phase-disordering mechanism, rather than Gaussian mean-field fluctuations', but it is in full agreement with earlier magnetization measurements by different authors in optimally-doped YBa2Cu3O7-d under lower magnetic fields. The adequacy of the mean-field Ginzburg-Landau descriptions is further confirmed when analyzing in terms of the GL scaling in the lowest-Landau-level (GL-LLL) approximation the magnetization data reported below Tc by L. Li and coworkers.