Liquid-to-liquid phase transition in pancake vortex systems
Abstract
We study the thermodynamics of a model of pancake vortices in layered superconductors. The model is based on the effective pair potential for the pancake vortices derived from the London approximation of a version of the Lawrence-Doniach model which is valid for extreme type-II superconductors. Using the hypernetted-chain (HNC) approximation, we find that there is a temperature below which multiple solutions to the HNC equations exist. By explicitly evaluating the free energy for each solution we find that the system undergoes a first-order transition between two vortex liquid phases. The low-temperature phase has larger correlations along the field direction than the high-temperature phase. We discuss the possible relation of this phase transition to the liquid-to-liquid phase transition recently observed in Y-Ba-Cu-O superconductors in high magnetic fields in the presence of disorder.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0108389,
title = {Liquid-to-liquid phase transition in pancake vortex systems},
author = {Joonhyun Yeo and M. A. Moore},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0108389},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 6 figures