Chaotic dynamics of superconductor vortices in the plastic phase

Abstract

We present numerical simulation results of driven vortex lattices in presence of random disorder at zero temperature. We show that the plastic dynamics is readily understood in the framework of chaos theory. Intermittency "routes to chaos" have been clearly identified, and positive Lyapunov exponents and broad-band noise, both characteristic of chaos, are found to coincide with the differential resistance peak. Furthermore, the fractal dimension of the strange attractor reveals that the chaotic dynamics of vortices is low-dimensional.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter