Melting of 'porous' vortex matter

Abstract

Bitter decoration and magneto-optical studies reveal that in heavy-ion irradiated superconductors, a 'porous' vortex matter is formed when vortices outnumber columnar defects (CDs). In this state ordered vortex crystallites are embedded in the 'pores' of a rigid matrix of vortices pinned on CDs. The crystallites melt through a first-order transition while the matrix remains solid. The melting temperature increases with density of CDs and eventually turns into a continuous transition. At high temperatures a sharp kink in the melting line is found, signaling an abrupt change from crystallite melting to melting of the rigid matrix.

(1) Paper to appear in Physical Review Letters. (2) 4 pages of text and 5 figures (3 figures in jpg and 2 figures in ps format). (3) Additional information about this work and Colored movies of the melting process can be obtained from http://www.weizmann.ac.il/home/fnsup/research-porous.html#movies

References in corpus (6)

• Elastic Theory of pinned flux lattices
• Inverse melting of the vortex lattice
• Resurrection of the Melting Line in the Bose Glass Superconductor
• Simulation of Flux Lines with Columnar Pins: Bose Glass and Entangled Liquids
• Defect-unbinding and the Bose-glass transition in layered superconductors
• Temperature variations of the disorder-induced vortex-lattice melting landscape

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