The Effects of Pinning on Critical Currents of Superconducting Films

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to compare how different artificial pinning arrays affect the critical current in superconducting films, revealing higher performance in hexagonal arrays and anisotropic effects in Kagome networks.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of hexagonal and Kagome pinning arrays on critical currents, including directional dependence, using molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Hexagonal pinning arrays yield higher critical currents than Kagome and random arrays.

Kagome arrays exhibit anisotropic transport properties.

Critical current varies with vortex density and array type.

Abstract

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we analyze the effects of artificial periodic arrays of pinning sites on the critical current of superconducting thin films as a function of vortex density. We analyze two types of periodic pinning arrays: hexagonal and Kagom\'e. For the Kagome pinning network we calculate, using two directions of transport current: longitudinal and transversal. Our results show that the hexagonal pinning array presents higher critical currents than Kagom\'e and random pinning configuration for all vortex densities. In addition, the Kagom\'e network shows anisotropy in their transport properties.