No Arabic abstract
Disorder induced melting, where the increase in positional entropy created by random pinning sites drives the order-disorder transition in a periodic solid, provides an alternate route to the more conventional thermal melting. Here, using real space imaging of the vortex lattice through scanning tunneling spectroscopy, we show that in the presence of weak pinning, the vortex lattice in a type II superconductor disorders through two distinct topological transitions. Across each transition, we separately identify metastable states formed through superheating of the low temperature state or supercooling of the high temperature state. Comparing crystals with different levels of pinning we conclude that the two-step melting is fundamentally associated with the presence of random pinning which generates topological defects in the ordered vortex lattice.
The thermodynamic $H-T$ phase diagram of Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$ was mapped by measuring local emph{equilibrium} magnetization $M(H,T)$ in presence of vortex `shaking. Two equally sharp first-order magnetization steps are revealed in a single temperature sweep, manifesting a liquid-solid-liquid sequence. In addition, a second-order glass transition line is revealed by a sharp break in the equilibrium $M(T)$ slope. The first- and second-order lines intersect at intermediate temperatures, suggesting the existence of four phases: Bragg glass and vortex crystal at low fields, glass and liquid at higher fields.
From muon spin rotation measurements on under- to overdoped Bi-2212 crystals we obtain evidence for a two-stage transition of the vortex matter as a function of temperature. The first transition is well known and related to the irreversibility line (IL). The second one is located below the IL and has not been previously observed. It occurs for all three sets of crystals and is unrelated to the vortex mobility. Our data are consistent with a two-stage melting scenario where the intra-planar melting of the vortex lattice and the inter-planar decoupling of the vortex lines occur independently.
We study the oxygen doping dependence of the equilibrium first-order melting and second-order glass transitions of vortices in Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+delta}$. Doping affects both anisotropy and disorder. Anisotropy scaling is shown to collapse the melting lines only where thermal fluctuations are dominant. Yet, in the region where disorder breaks that scaling, the glass lines are still collapsed. A quantitative fit to melting and replica symmetry breaking lines of a 2D Ginzburg-Landau model further reveals that disorder amplitude weakens with doping, but to a lesser degree than thermal fluctuations, enhancing the relative role of disorder.
We present a detailed numerical simulation study of a two dimensional system of particles interacting via the Weeks-Chandler-Anderson potential, the repulsive part of the Lennard-Jones potential. With reduction of density, the system shows a two-step melting: a continuous melting from solid to hexatic phase, followed by a a first order melting of hexatic to liquid. The solid-hexatic melting is consistent with the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) scenario and shows dislocation unbinding. The first order melting of hexatic to fluid phase, on the other hand, is dominated by formation of string of defects at the hexatic-fluid interfaces.
We study thermal diffusion dynamics of a single vortex in two dimensional XY model. By numerical simulations we find an abnormal diffusion such that the mobility decreases with time $t$ as $1/ln t$. In addition we construct a one dimensional diffusion-like equation to model the dynamics and confirm that it conserves quantitative property of the abnormal diffusion. By analyzing the reduced model, we find that the radius of the collectively moving region with the vortex core grows as $R(t) propto t^{1/2}$. This suggests that the mobility of the vortex is described by dynamical correlation length as $1/ln R(t)$.