Chaos and plasticity in superconductor vortices: a low-dimensional dynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex chaotic behavior of vortex lattices in superconductors under disorder, revealing low-dimensional chaos and intermittency phenomena through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that vortex plastic dynamics exhibit dissipative chaos with low fractal dimension, providing new insights into the underlying low-dimensional models of vortex behavior.

Findings

Plastic vortex dynamics display dissipative chaos.

Intermittency routes to chaos are identified.

Low fractal dimension suggests few variables suffice for modeling.

Abstract

We present new results of numerical simulations for driven vortex lattices in presence of random disorder at zero temperature. We show that the plastic dynamics of vortices display dissipative chaos. Intermittency "routes to chaos" have been clearly identified below the differential resistance peak. The peak region is characterized by positive Lyapunov exponents characteristic of chaos, and low frequency broad-band noise. Furthermore we find a low fractal dimension of the strange attractor, which suggests that only a few dynamical variables are sufficient to model the complex plastic dynamics of vortices.