English

Vortex lattice melting in layered superconductors with periodic columnar pins

Superconductivity 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

The melting transition of the vortex lattice in highly anisotropic, layered superconductors with commensurate, periodic columnar pins is studied in a geometry where magnetic field and columnar pins are normal to the layers. Thermodynamic properties and equilibrium density distributions are obtained from numerical minimizations of an appropriate free-energy functional. We find a line of first-order transitions that ends at a critical point as the pin concentration is increased. A simple Landau theory providing a semi-quantitative explanation of the numerical results is proposed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0106274,
  title  = {Vortex lattice melting in layered superconductors with periodic columnar pins},
  author = {Chandan Dasgupta and Oriol T. Valls},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0106274},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Four pages, 3 Figures