Evaporation of the pancake-vortex lattice in weakly-coupled layered superconductors

Abstract

We calculate the melting line of the pancake-vortex system in a layered superconductor, interpolating between two-dimensional (2D) melting at high fields and the zero-field limit of single-stack evaporation. Long-range interactions between pancake vortices in different layers permit a mean-field approach, the ``substrate model'', where each 2D crystal fluctuates in a substrate potential due to the vortices in other layers. We find the thermal stability limit of the 3D solid, and compare the free energy to a 2D liquid to determine the first-order melting transition and its jump in entropy.

4 pages, RevTeX, two postscript figures incorporated using epsf

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