paper

Vortex Shear Banding Transitions in Superconductors with Inhomogeneous Pinning Arrays

arXiv:1908.07606 · doi:10.1088/2399-6528/ab5e66

Abstract

We numerically examine the flow of superconducting vortices in samples containing square pinning arrays in which a band of pins is removed. When a drive is applied at an angle with respect to the band orientation, we find that the vortex depinning initiates in the pin-free channel. The moving vortices form a series of quasi-one-dimensional shear bands that begin flowing in the bulk of the pin-free channel, and the motion gradually approaches the edge of the pinned region. The consecutive depinning of each shear band appears as a series of jumps in the velocity-force curves and as sharp steps in the spatial velocity profiles. When a constant drive is applied parallel to the pin-free channel along with a gradually increasing perpendicular drive, the net vortex velocity decreases in a series of steps that correspond to the immobilization of bands of vortices, and in some cases the flow can drop to zero, creating a field effect transistor phenomenon. These results should also be relevant to other types of systems that exhibit depinning in the presence of inhomogeneous pinning.

arXiv comment14 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (29)

Cited by in corpus (1)