1,845 research outputs found
Localized Flux Lines and the Bose Glass
Columnar defects provide effective pinning centers for magnetic flux lines in
high-- superconductors. Utilizing a mapping of the statistical
mechanics of directed lines to the quantum mechanics of two--dimensional
bosons, one expects an entangled flux liquid phase at high temperatures,
separated by a second--order localization transition from a low--temperature
``Bose glass'' phase with infinite tilt modulus. Recent decoration experiments
have demonstrated that below the matching field the repulsive forces between
the vortices may be sufficiently large to produce strong spatial correlations
in the Bose glass. This is confirmed by numerical simulations, and a remarkably
wide soft ``Coulomb gap'' at the chemical potential is found in the
distribution of pinning energies. At low currents, the dominant transport
mechanism in the Bose glass phase proceeds via the formation of double kinks
between not necessarily adjacent columnar pins, similar to variable--range
hopping in disordered semiconductors. The strong correlation effects
originating in the long--range vortex interactions drastically reduce
variable--range hopping transport.Comment: 10 pages, latex ("lamuphys.sty" file included), 6 figures can be
obtained from the author ([email protected]); to appear in Proc. XIV
Sitges conference on "Complex Behaviour of Glassy Systems" (Springer--Verlag
Variational theory of flux-line liquids
We formulate a variational (Hartree like) description of flux line liquids
which improves on the theory we developed in an earlier paper [A.M. Ettouhami,
Phys. Rev. B 65, 134504 (2002)]. We derive, in particular, how the massive term
confining the fluctuations of flux lines varies with temperature and show that
this term vanishes at high enough temperatures where the vortices behave as
freely fluctuating elastic lines.Comment: 10 pages, 1 postscript figur
Low-Temperatures Vortex Dynamics in Twinned Superconductors
We discuss the low-temperature dynamics of magnetic flux lines in samples
with a family of parallel twin planes. A current applied along the twin planes
drives flux motion in the direction transverse to the planes and acts like an
electric field applied to {\it one-dimensional} carriers in disordered
semiconductors. As in flux arrays with columnar pins, there is a regime where
the dynamics is dominated by superkink excitations that correspond to Mott
variable range hopping (VRH) of carriers. In one dimension, however, rare
events, such as large regions void of twin planes, can impede VRH and dominate
transport in samples that are sufficiently long in the direction of flux
motion. In short samples rare regions can be responsible for mesoscopic
effects.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures email: [email protected]
Theory of Double-Sided Flux Decorations
A novel two-sided Bitter decoration technique was recently employed by Yao et
al. to study the structure of the magnetic vortex array in high-temperature
superconductors. Here we discuss the analysis of such experiments. We show that
two-sided decorations can be used to infer {\it quantitative} information about
the bulk properties of flux arrays, and discuss how a least squares analysis of
the local density differences can be used to bring the two sides into registry.
Information about the tilt, compressional and shear moduli of bulk vortex
configurations can be extracted from these measurements.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures not included (to request send email to
[email protected]
Interstitials, Vacancies and Dislocations in Flux-Line Lattices: A Theory of Vortex Crystals, Supersolids and Liquids
We study a three dimensional Abrikosov vortex lattice in the presence of an
equilibrium concentration of vacancy, interstitial and dislocation loops.
Vacancies and interstitials renormalize the long-wavelength bulk and tilt
elastic moduli. Dislocation loops lead to the vanishing of the long-wavelength
shear modulus. The coupling to vacancies and interstitials - which are always
present in the liquid state - allows dislocations to relax stresses by climbing
out of their glide plane. Surprisingly, this mechanism does not yield any
further independent renormalization of the tilt and compressional moduli at
long wavelengths. The long wavelength properties of the resulting state are
formally identical to that of the ``flux-line hexatic'' that is a candidate
``normal'' hexatically ordered vortex liquid state.Comment: 21 RevTeX pgs, 7 eps figures uuencoded; corrected typos, published
versio
Topological Defects on Fluctuating Surfaces: General Properties and the Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition
We investigate the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition for hexatic order on a free
fluctuating membrane and derive both a Coulomb gas and a sine-Gordon
Hamiltonian to describe it. The Coulomb-gas Hamiltonian includes charge
densities arising from disclinations and from Gaussian curvature. There is an
interaction coupling the difference between these two densities, whose strength
is determined by the hexatic rigidity, and an interaction coupling Gaussian
curvature densities arising from the Liouville Hamiltonian resulting from the
imposition of a covariant cutoff. In the sine-Gordon Hamiltonian, there is a
linear coupling between a scalar field and the Gaussian curvature. We discuss
gauge-invariant correlation function for hexatic order and the dielectric
constant of the Coulomb gas. We also derive renormalization group recursion
relations that predict a transition with decreasing bending rigidity .Comment: REVTEX, 45 pages with 11 postscript figures compressed using uufiles.
Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Victims of Progress: Economic Integration, Specialization, and Wages for Unskilled Labor
In this paper we demonstrate that intra-industry trade (or FDI) between identical countries could produce the observed deterioration in the relative wages of unskilled workers. This involves a model of North-North integration through either increased trade flows or increased MNE- based production. Our motivation in this regard is arguments to the effect that trade cannot be responsible for the observed labour market trends because trade with developing countries is quantitatively too small to have significant labour market effects. We also introduce a relatively unexploited class of model that possesses attractive properties with respect to the explicit incorporation of firm-theoretic considerations in trade models
Fluctuations and Intrinsic Pinning in Layered Superconductors
A flux liquid can condense into a smectic crystal in a pure layered
superconductors with the magnetic field oriented nearly parallel to the layers.
If the smectic order is commensurate with the layering, this crystal is {\sl
stable} to point disorder. By tilting and adjusting the magnitude of the
applied field, both incommensurate and tilted smectic and crystalline phases
are found. We discuss transport near the second order smectic freezing
transition, and show that permeation modes lead to a small non--zero
resistivity and large but finite tilt modulus in the smectic crystal.Comment: 4 pages + 1 style file + 1 figure (as uufile) appended, REVTEX 3.
Properties of the Bose glass phase in irradiated superconductors near the matching field
Structural and transport properties of interacting localized flux lines in
the Bose glass phase of irradiated superconductors are studied by means of
Monte Carlo simulations near the matching field B_Phi, where the densities of
vortices and columnar defects are equal. For a completely random columnar pin
distribution in the xy-plane transverse to the magnetic field, our results show
that the repulsive vortex interactions destroy the Mott insulator phase which
was predicted to occur at B = B_Phi. On the other hand, for ratios of the
penetration depth to average defect distance lambda/d <= 1, characteristic
remnants of the Mott insulator singularities remain visible in experimentally
accessible quantities as the magnetization, the bulk modulus, and the
magnetization relaxation, when B is varied near B_Phi. For spatially more
regular disorder, e.g., a nearly triangular defect distribution, we find that
the Mott insulator phase can survive up to considerably large interaction range
\lambda/d, and may thus be observable in experiments.Comment: RevTex, 17 pages, eps files for 12 figures include
Hydrodynamics of liquids of arbitrarily curved flux-lines and vortex loops
We derive a hydrodynamic model for a liquid of arbitrarily curved flux-lines
and vortex loops using the mapping of the vortex liquid onto a liquid of
relativistic charged quantum bosons in 2+1 dimensions recently suggested by
Tesanovic and by Sudbo and collaborators. The loops in the flux-line system
correspond to particle-antiparticle fluctuations in the bosons. We explicitly
incorporate the externally applied magnetic field which in the boson model
corresponds to a chemical potential associated with the conserved charge
density of the bosons. We propose this model as a convenient and physically
appealing starting point for studying the properties of the vortex liquid
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