Unzipping Vortices in Type-II Superconductors

Abstract

The unzipping of vortex lines using magnetic-force microscopy from extended defects is studied theoretically. We study both the unzipping isolated vortex from common defects, such as columnar pins and twin-planes, and the unzipping of a vortex from a plane in the presence of other vortices. We show, using analytic and numerical methods, that the universal properties of the unzipping transition of a single vortex depend only on the dimensionality of the defect in the presence and absence of disorder. For the unzipping of a vortex from a plane populated with many vortices is shown to be very sensitive to the properties of the vortices in the two-dimensional plane. In particular such unzipping experiments can be used to measure the ``Luttinger liquid parameter'' of the vortices in the plane. In addition we suggest a method for measuring the line tension of the vortex directly using the experiments.

19 pages 15 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Non-Hermitian Luttinger liquids and flux line pinning in planar superconductors
• Do Vortices Entangle?
• Vortex pinning by a columnar defect in planar superconductors with point disorder
• DNA unzipping and the unbinding of directed polymers in a random media
• Unzipping flux lines from extended defects in type-II superconductors

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Statics and Dynamics of Skyrmions Interacting with Pinning: A Review
• Controlled Manipulation of Individual Vortices in a Superconductor
• Braiding Majorana Fermions and Creating Quantum Logic Gates with Vortices on a Periodic Pinning Structure
• Viscous Decoupling Transitions for Individually Dragged Particles in Systems with Quenched Disorder
• Individual Vortex Manipulation and Stick-Slip Motion in Periodic Pinning Arrays
• Nonuniform and coherent motion of superconducting vortices in the picometer-per-second regime
• Monte Carlo Simulation of the Crossover from Bose Glass to Bragg Glass Phase in Layered BSCCO with Columnar Defects