Vortex Physics in Confined Geometries

Abstract

Patterned irradiation of cuprate superconductors with columnar defects allows a new generation of experiments which can probe the properties of vortex liquids by forcing them to flow in confined geometries. Such experiments can be used to distinguish experimentally between continuous disorder-driven glass transitions of vortex matter, such as the vortex glass or the Bose glass transition, and nonequilibrium polymer-like glass transitions driven by interaction and entanglement. For continuous glass transitions, an analysis of such experiments that combines an inhomogeneous scaling theory with the hydrodynamic description of viscous flow of vortex liquids can be used to infer the critical behavior. After generalizing vortex hydrodynamics to incorporate currents and field gradients both longitudinal and transverse to the applied field, the critical exponents for all six vortex liquid viscosities are obtained. In particular, the shear viscosity is predicted to diverge as $|T-T_{BG}{|}^{-\nu z}$ at the Bose glass transition, with $\nu \simeq 1$ and $z\simeq 4.6$ the dynamical critical exponent. The scaling behavior of the ac resistivity is also derived. As concrete examples of flux flow in confined geometries, flow in a channel and in the Corbino disk geometry are discussed in detail. Finally, the implications of scaling for the hydrodynamic description of transport in the dc flux transformer geometry are discussed.

27 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Physica C

References in corpus (5)

• The Bose-glass phase in twinned YBaCuO(123)
• Critical properties of Bose-glass superconductors
• Patterned Geometries and Hydrodynamics at the Vortex Bose Glass Transition
• Perturbative studies of the conductivity in the vortex-liquid regime
• A study of nonlocal conductivity in high-temperature superconductors

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Tearing transition and plastic flow in superconducting thin films
• Plasticity in current-driven vortex lattices
• Patterned Irradiation of YBa_2Cu_3O_(7-x) Thin Films
• Measurement of the shear strength of a charge-density wave
• Hydrodynamics of liquids of arbitrarily curved flux-lines and vortex loops
• Vortex Shear Banding Transitions in Superconductors with Inhomogeneous Pinning Arrays