Title

Translational Correlations in the Vortex Array at the Surface of a Type-II Superconductor

Author(s)/Creator(s)

M. Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse University
David R. Nelson, Harvard University

Document Type

Working Paper

Date

1992

Keywords

Condensed Matter

Language

English

Disciplines

Physics

Description/Abstract

We discuss the statistical mechanics of magnetic flux lines in a finite-thickness slab of type-II superconductor. The long wavelength properties of a flux-line liquid in a slab geometry are described by a hydrodynamic free energy that incorporates the boundary conditions on the flux lines at the sample's surface as a surface contribution to the free energy. Bulk and surface weak disorder are modeled via Gaussian impurity potentials. This free energy is used to evaluate the two-dimensional structure factor of the flux-line tips at the sample surface. We find that surface interaction always dominates in determining the decay of translational correlations in the asymptotic long-wavelength limit. On the other hand, such large length scales have not been probed by the decoration experiments. Our results indicate that the translational correlations extracted from the analysis of the Bitter patterns are indeed representative of behavior of flux lines in the bulk.

Additional Information

23 pages, 1 figure (not included), harvmac.tex macro needed (e-mail requests to marchetti@suhep.phy.syr.edu SU-CM-92-018

Recommended Citation

Marchetti, M. Cristina and Nelson, David R., "Translational Correlations in the Vortex Array at the Surface of a Type-II Superconductor" (1992). Physics - All Scholarship. 4.
https://surface.syr.edu/phy/4

Source

Arxiv.org

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.