Flux-line entanglement as the mechanism of melting transition in high-temperature superconductors in a magnetic field

Abstract

The mechanism of the flux-line-lattice (FLL) melting in anisotropic high-T_c superconductors in $\mathbf{B}\parallel \hat{\mathbf{c}}$ is clarified by Monte Carlo simulations of the 3D frustrated XY model. The percentage of entangled flux lines abruptly changes at the melting temperature T_m, while no sharp change can be found in the number and size distribution of vortex loops around T_m. Therefore, the origin of this melting transition is the entanglement of flux lines. Scaling behaviors of physical quantities are consistent with the above mechanism of the FLL melting. The Lindemann number is also evaluated without any phenomenological arguments.

10 pages, 5 Postscript figures, RevTeX; changed content and figures, Phys. Rev. B Rapid Commun. in press

References in corpus (6)

• Extreme Type-II Superconductors in a Magnetic Field: A Theory of Critical Fluctuations
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• Universal Phase Diagram for Vortex States of Layered Superconductors in Strong Magnetic Fields
• Phase-coherence and the boson-analogy of vortex liquids
• Numerical study of vortex matter using the Bose model: First-order melting and entanglement
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• Bragg-Bose glass phase in vortex states of high-$T_{\mathrm{c}}$ superconductors with sparse and weak columnar defects
• Vortex melting and decoupling transitions in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_4$O${}_8$ single crystals
• Entanglement transition of elastic lines in a strongly disordered environment
• Nature of Decoupling in the Mixed Phase of Extremely Type-II Layered Superconductors