Avalanches and Self-Organized Criticality in Superconductors

Abstract

We review the use of superconductors as a playground for the experimental study of front roughening and avalanches. Using the magneto-optical technique, the spatial distribution of the vortex density in the sample is monitored as a function of time. The roughness and growth exponents corresponding to the vortex landscape are determined and compared to the exponents that characterize the avalanches in the framework of Self-Organized Criticality. For those situations where a thermo-magnetic instability arises, an analytical non-linear and non-local model is discussed, which is found to be consistent to great detail with the experimental results. On anisotropic substrates, the anisotropy regularizes the avalanches.

References in corpus (5)

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• Dendritic flux penetration in Pb films with a periodic array of antidots
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• Quasiparticle spectroscopy, transport, and magnetic properties of Nb films used in superconducting transmon qubits
• Vortex Dynamics at the transition to the normal state in YBCO films
• Staircase penetration of magnetic flux into a superconducting flat ring
• Transformation of the trapped flux in a SC disc under electromagnetic exposure