Excess of topological defects induced by confinement in vortex nanocrystals

Abstract

We directly image individual vortex positions in nanocrystals in order to unveil the structural property that contributes to the depletion of the entropy-jump entailed at the first-order transition. On reducing the nanocrystal size the density of topological defects increases near the edges over a characteristic length. Within this "healing-length" distance from the sample edge vortex rows tend to bend while towards the center of the sample the positional order of the vortex structure is what is expected for the Bragg-glass phase. This suggests that the healing-length may be a key quantity to model the entropy-jump depletion in the first-order transition of extremely-layered vortex nanocrystals.

References in corpus (6)

• Topological defects in the crystalline state of one-component plasmas of non-uniform density
• Stabilization of vortex-antivortex configurations in mesoscopic superconductors by engineered pinning
• Size-induced depression of first-order transition lines and entropy-jump in extremely-layered nanocrystalline vortex matter
• Latent-heat and non-linear vortex liquid at the vicinity of the first-order phase transition in layered high-Tc superconductors
• Vortex crossing and trapping in doubly connected mesoscopic loops of a single-crystal type II superconductor
• Geometrical confinement effects in layered mesoscopic vortex-matter

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Hyperuniform vortex patterns at the surface of type-II superconductors
• Unveiling the vortex glass phase in the surface and volume of a type-II superconductor
• Enhancement of penetration field in vortex nanocrystals due to Andreev bound states
• Bridge in micron-sized Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+y sample act as converging lens for vortices