Deconfinement of Vortices with Continuously Variable Fractions of the Unit Flux Quanta in Two-Gap Superconductors

Abstract

We propose a new stage of confiment-decofinment transition, which can be observed in laboratory. In two-gap superconductors (SCs), two kinds of vortex exist and each of them carries a continuously variable fraction of the unit flux quanta Phi_0=h c / 2 e. The confined state of these two is a usual vortex and stable in the low temperature region of the system under a certain magnetic field above H_c1. We see an analogy to quarks in a charged pion. An entropy gain causes two fractional vortices to be deconfined above a certain temperature.

5 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (2)

• A superconductor to superfluid phase transition in liquid metallic hydrogen
• Ginzburg-Landau theory of vortices in a multi-gap superconductor

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