Two-dimensional Coulomb glass as a model for vortex pinning in superconducting films

Abstract

A glass model of vortex pinning in highly disordered thin superconducting films in magnetic fields $B\ll H_{c2}$ at low temperatures is proposed. Strong collective pinning of a vortex system realized in disordered superconductors that are close to the quantum phase transition to the insulating phase -- such as ${\mathrm{InO}}_x$, $\mathrm{NbN}$, $\mathrm{TiN}$, $\mathrm{MoGe}$, nano-granular aluminium, and others -- is considered theoretically for the first time. Utilizing the replica trick developed for the spin glass theory, we demonstrate that such vortex system is in non-ergodic state of glass type with large kinetic inductance per square $L_K$. Distribution function of local pinning energies is calculated, and it is shown that it possesses a wide gap, i.e. the probability to find a weakly pinned vortex is extremely low.

References in corpus (10)

• Glass transition of a particle in a random potential, front selection in nonlinear RG and entropic phenomena in Liouville and SinhGordon models
• Fractal superconductivity near localization threshold
• Quantum breakdown of superconductivity in low-dimensional materials
• Weak- to strong pinning crossover
• The glass transition and the Coulomb gap in electron glasses
• Mean field theory for the three-dimensional Coulomb glass
• Nonlinear screening theory of the Coulomb glass
• Interactions, Distribution of Pinning Energies, and Transport in the Bose Glass Phase of Vortices in Superconductors
• Quantum meets classical phase transition: Low-temperature anomaly in disordered superconductors near $B_{c2}$
• Thermal depinning and creep in strong pinning theory

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Mean-field theory of first-order quantum superconductor-insulator transition