Surface melting of the vortex lattice

Abstract

We discuss the effect of an (ab)-surface on the melting transition of the pancake-vortex lattice in a layered superconductor within a density functional theory approach. Both discontinuous and continuous surface melting are predicted for this system, although the latter scenario occupies the major part of the low-field phase diagram. The formation of a quasi-liquid layer below the bulk melting temperature inhibits the appearance of a superheated solid phase, yielding an asymmetric hysteretic behavior which has been seen in experiments.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Melting and nonmelting of solid surfaces and nanosystems
• Evaporation of the pancake-vortex lattice in weakly-coupled layered superconductors
• Vortex matter in layered superconductors without Josephson coupling: numerical simulations within a mean-field approach
• Freezing transition of the vortex liquid in anisotropic superconductors

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Mott insulator phases and first-order melting in BSCCO crystals with periodic surface holes
• Suppression of the Melting Line in a Weakly Disordered Flux-line System
• Density functional theory of vortex lattice melting in layered superconductors: a mean-field--substrate approach
• Surface Melting of the Vortex Lattice in Layered Superconductors: Density Functional Theory