Decomposing the Bragg glass and the peak effect in a Type-II superconductor

Rasmus Toft-petersen, Asger B. Abrahamsen, Sandor Balog, Lionel Porcar, Mark Laver

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
154 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Adding impurities or defects destroys crystalline order. Occasionally, however, extraordinary behaviour emerges that cannot be explained by perturbing the ordered state. One example is the Kondo effect, where magnetic impurities in metals drastically alter the temperature dependence of resistivity. In Type-II superconductors, disorder generally works to pin vortices, giving zero resistivity below a critical current jc. However, peaks have been observed in the temperature and field dependences of jc. This peak effect is difficult to explain in terms of an ordered Abrikosov vortex lattice. Here we test the widespread paradigm that an order-disorder transition of the vortex ensemble drives the peak effect. Using neutron scattering to probe the vortex order in superconducting vanadium, we uncover an order-disorder transition from a quasi-long-range-ordered phase to a vortex glass. The peak effect, however, is found to lie at higher fields and temperatures, in a region where thermal fluctuations of individual vortices become significant.
Original languageEnglish
Article number901
JournalNature Communications
Volume9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Mar 2018

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Decomposing the Bragg glass and the peak effect in a Type-II superconductor'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this