Surface melting of the vortex lattice
Superconductivity
2007-05-23 v1 Soft Condensed Matter
Abstract
We discuss the effect of an (ab)-surface on the melting transition of the pancake-vortex lattice in a layered superconductor within a density functional theory approach. Both discontinuous and continuous surface melting are predicted for this system, although the latter scenario occupies the major part of the low-field phase diagram. The formation of a quasi-liquid layer below the bulk melting temperature inhibits the appearance of a superheated solid phase, yielding an asymmetric hysteretic behavior which has been seen in experiments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0511046,
title = {Surface melting of the vortex lattice},
author = {A. De Col and G. I. Menon and V. B. Geshkenbein and G. Blatter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0511046},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures