Related papers: Vortex trapping and expulsion in thin-film type-II…
The observation of vortices in superconductors was a major breakthrough in developing the conceptual background for superconducting applications. Each vortex carries a flux quantum, and the magnetic field radially decreases from the center.…
The properties of vortices in superconducting thin films are revisited. The interaction between two Pearl vortices in an infinite film is approximated at all distances by a simple expression. The interaction of a vortex with a regular…
Magnetic flux (vortex) trapping remains a major obstacle to very large scale integration in superconducting electronics. Moats -- etched regions in circuit layers placed in ground planes and around critical circuitry -- offer a simple…
We apply a recently developed effective string theory for vortex lines to the case of two-dimensional trapped superfluids. We do not assume a perturbative microscopic description for the superfluid, but only a gradient expansion for the…
We have monitored new peculiarities of the dynamics of catastrophic avalanches of the magnetic flux in superconducting Nb, Nb-Ti, and YBaCuO samples: i) convergent oscillations of the magnetic flux; ii) a threshold for entering the huge…
Epitaxial niobium-nitride thin films with a critical temperature of Tc=16K and a thickness of 100nm were fabricated on MgO(100) substrates by pulsed laser deposition. Low-temperature magnetic force microscopy (MFM) images of the…
The evolution of the vortex glass (VG) phase transition and vortex creep with decreasing film thickness is studied in ultrathin, polycrystalline niobium films, with thickness in the range 7.4 nm to 44 nm, using current-voltage…
Superconductors are excellent testbeds for studying vortices, topological excitations that also appear in superfluids, liquid crystals, and Bose-Einstein condensates. Vortex motion can be disruptive; it can cause phase transitions, glitches…
The vortex phases in type-II superconductors are very important since they determine many magnetic and electric properties of the parent compound. However, a universal tool to characterize the vortex phases is still lacking. We demonstrate…
Vortices in superconductors can help identify emergent phenomena but certain fundamental aspects of vortices, such as their entropy, remain poorly understood. Here, we study the vortex entropy in underdoped Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+x}$ by…
This paper addresses the problem of vortex formation during a rapid quench in a superconducting film. It builds on previous work showing that in a local gauge theory there are two distinct mechanisms of defect formation, based on…
Magneto-optical imaging is used to visualize vortex avalanches in MgB2 films at 4K. Avalanches ranging from 50 to 50000 vortices were detected. The size distribution function has a clear peak whose position moves towards larger sizes as the…
We carry out numerical simulations to investigate spontaneous vortex formation during a temperature quench of a superconductor film from the normal to the superconducting phase in the absence of an external magnetic field. Our results agree…
We show how to calculate semi-analytically the dense vortex state in strong type-II superconducting nanostructures. For the specific case of a strip, we find vortex lattice solutions which also incorporate surface superconductivity. We…
Controlled engineering of vortex pinning sites in copper-oxide superconductors is a critical issue in manufacturing devices based on magnetic flux quanta. To address this, we employed a focused He-ion beam (He-FIB) to irradiate thin…
We address the question of probing the supercurrents in superconducting (SC) samples on a local scale by performing Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) experiments with a SC tip. In this configuration, we show that the tunneling…
Thermal conductivity $\kappa_{xx}(T)$ under a field is investigated in $d_{x^2-y^2}$-wave superconductors and isotropic s-wave superconductors by the linear response theory, using a microscopic wave function of the vortex lattice states. To…
We discuss a recent experiment in which the resistance of a superconducting film has been measured in magnetic field. A strong decrease of the superconducting film resistance has been observed when a metallic gate is placed above the film.…
Local magnetization measurements on 100 nm type-II superconducting Pb thin films show that flux penetration changes qualitatively with temperature. Small flux jumps at the lowest temperatures gradually increase in size, then disappear near…
The presence of quantum vortices determines the electromagnetic response of superconducting materials and devices. Controlling the vortex motion, their pinning on intrinsic and artificial defects is therefore essential for superconducting…