Vortex jamming in superconductors and granular rheology

Abstract

We demonstrate that a highly frustrated anisotropic Josephson junction array(JJA) on a square lattice exhibits a zero-temperature jamming transition, which shares much in common with those in granular systems. Anisotropy of the Josephson couplings along the horizontal and vertical directions plays roles similar to normal load or density in granular systems. We studied numerically static and dynamic response of the system against shear, i. e. injection of external electric current at zero temperature. Current-voltage curves at various strength of the anisotropy exhibit universal scaling features around the jamming point much as do the flow curves in granular rheology, shear-stress vs shear-rate. It turns out that at zero temperature the jamming transition occurs right at the isotropic coupling and anisotropic JJA behaves as an exotic fragile vortex matter : it behaves as superconductor (vortex glass) into one direction while normal conductor (vortex liquid) into the other direction even at zero temperature. Furthermore we find a variant of the theoretical model for the anisotropic JJA quantitatively reproduces universal master flow-curves of the granular systems. Our results suggest an unexpected common paradigm stretching over seemingly unrelated fields - the rheology of soft materials and superconductivity.

10 pages, 5 figures. To appear in New Journal of Physics

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Critical behaviors of sheared frictionless granular materials near jamming transition
• Persistence of Metastable Vortex Lattice Domains in MgB2 in the Presence of Vortex Motion
• Vortex solid phase with frozen undulations in superconducting Josephson-junction arrays in external magnetic fields
• Transition by Breaking of Analyticity in the Ground State of Josephson Junction Arrays as a Static Signature of the Vortex Jamming Transition