Long-Range Fluctuation-Induced Attraction of Vortices to the Surface in Layered Superconductors

Abstract

It is shown that in extremely anisotropic layered superconductors the interaction of vortex lines with a parallel planar surface, which for straight lines along the c-axis decreases exponentially over the in-plane penetration depth $\lambda$, becomes a long-range dipole--dipole attraction when the vortex line is distorted randomly. This novel long-range fluctuation-induced attraction enhances the thermal fluctuations down to depths much larger than $\lambda$ and may lead to flux creep towards the surface.

12 pages, RevTeX, a figure is attached as a postscript file, the paper is accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (1)

• Elastic theory of flux lattices in presence of weak disorder

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Steric repulsion and van der Waals attraction between flux lines in disordered high Tc superconductors
• The Structure of the Vortex Liquid at the Surface of a Layered Superconductor