A dual point description of mesoscopic superconductors

Abstract

We present an analysis of the magnetic response of a mesoscopic superconductor, i.e. a system of sizes comparable to the coherence length and to the London penetration depth. Our approach is based on special properties of the two dimensional Ginzburg-Landau equations, satisfied at the dual point $(\kappa =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}).$ Closed expressions for the free energy and the magnetization of the superconductor are derived. A perturbative analysis in the vicinity of the dual point allows us to take into account vortex interactions, using a new scaling result for the free energy. In order to characterize the vortex/current interactions, we study vortex configurations that are out of thermodynamical equilibrium. Our predictions agree with the results of recent experiments performed on mesoscopic aluminium disks.

revtex, 20 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Vortex formation in a stirred Bose-Einstein condensate
• Flux penetration and expulsion in thin superconducting disks

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Dependence of the vortex configuration on the geometry of mesoscopic flat samples
• Theory of superconductor with kappa close to 1/sqrt{2}
• Vortex charge in mesoscopic superconductors
• Half-Integer Winding Number Solutions to the Landau-Ginzburg-Higgs Equations and Instability of the Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen Vortex
• An effective lowest Landau level treatment of demagnetization in superconducting mesoscopic disks
• Mesoscopic superconductors in the London limit: equilibrium properties and metastability
• Giant vortices in the Ginzburg-Landau description of superconductivity
• Self-dual Ginzburg-Landau vortices in a disk
• Vortex nucleation through edge states in finite Bose-Einstein condensates
• Giant vortices in small mesoscopic disks: an approximate description