Targeted evolution of pinning landscapes for large superconducting critical currents

Abstract

The ability of type-II superconductors to carry large amounts of current at high magnetic fields is a key requirement for future design innovations in high-field magnets for accelerators and compact fusion reactors and largely depends on the vortex pinning landscape comprised of material defects. The complex interaction of vortices with defects that can be grown chemically, e.g., self-assembled nanoparticles and nanorods, or introduced by post-synthesis particle irradiation precludes a priori prediction of the critical current and can result in highly non-trivial effects on the critical current. Here, we borrow concepts from biological evolution to create a genetic algorithm evolving pinning landscapes to accommodate vortex pinning and determine the best possible configuration of inclusions for two different scenarios: an evolution process starting from a pristine system and one with pre-existing defects to demonstrate the potential for a post-processing approach to enhance critical currents. Furthermore, the presented approach is even more general and can be adapted to address various other targeted material optimization problems.

15 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (4)

• A general scaling relation for the critical current density in Nb3Sn
• Stable large-scale solver for Ginzburg-Landau equations for superconductors
• Effect of hexagonal patterned arrays and defect geometry on the critical current of superconducting films
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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Perspective: Challenges and Transformative Opportunities in Superconductor Vortex Physics
• Thermodynamic approach for enhancing superconducting critical current performance
• The quest for high critical current in applied high-temperature superconductors
• Anisotropic suppression of hyperuniformity of elastic systems in media with planar disorder
• Vortex Dynamics, Pinning, and Magic Angles on Moiré Patterns
• Depinning and flow of a vortex line in an uniaxial random medium